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Losing the Will to Argue—Civilly—is a National Risk, Professor Says
… At this year’s Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) convocation, the message to graduates was both celebratory and sober. For … and for one’s opponent. She also spoke candidly about the rise of what she termed “performative actions”—institutional …
The Progress of the Disciplines
… For Harvard’s 375th anniversary, leading professors predict the future of their fields: Biology in This Century, by Pamela A. …
Issue: September-October 2011
Nabob of the No-huddle
… The National Football League (NFL) has had only one head … matched by no other coach--was inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. At the ceremony, ESPN's Chris … yet slain. I'll just lie down and bleed awhile, And I'll rise and fight again. "Eight or ten players came up and …
Issue: November-December 2001
The End of the Harvard Square Pit
… On a hot June afternoon, the Harvard Square Pit was quiet. In the submerged hangout … will be staring at fences: in early July, the city of Cambridge will begin demolishing the Pit, a famous … earlier on June 25. At the Saturday evening celebration of the popular counterculture locale, hosted (perhaps …
The Plastic Earth
… Jerry Mitrovica is a solid-earth geophysicist, but the description is inapt. He spends much of his time demonstrating that the earth is not firm at … the sea level has fallen where the ice sheet melted, it rises everywhere else beyond that 2,000-kilometer boundary, …
Issue: September-October 2016
“The Genius of the Balafon”
… West Africa, Neba Solo, born Souleymane Traoré in 1969, is often called “the genius of the balafon,” says Ingrid T. Monson. So skilled a player, …
Issue: January-February 2006
The Context: Resurrecting the Woolly Mammoth
… This is the tenth post of "The Context"—a biweekly series of archival stories—offering our readers a useful background … reorganization. Its organisms are built to be biological machines, with DNA and proteins standing in for circuit …
Icon of the Life of the Mind
… sometimes, and call C.E.N. publicly and without apology the infernal old sinner and sham that he is," wrote William … A.B. 1846, LL.D. '87, "was the most influential progenitor of the humanities in American education and scholarship," writes James Turner '68, Ph.D. '75, professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, in his …
The Best of Times…
… Harvard’s annual financial report, for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2016 (released in late October), was full of good tidings: operating revenue up 5.6 percent (more than … For the current year, that distribution is budgeted to rise 4 percent—before being held to no growth in fiscal …
Issue: January-February 2017
Conquest of the Air
… Wright's historic first flight lasted just 12 seconds. The Wright Flyer traveled 120 feet, a skip across the sand … on December 17, 1903, eventually improving to a distance of 852 feet and a time of 59 seconds. Yet on the last flight, with Wilbur at the …
Issue: May-June 2003
The Power of Patience
… Editor’s note: The Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching (HILT) … to ponder the following framing question: “In this time of disruption and innovation for universities, what are the … as well as the questions and speculations that arise from those observations. The time span is explicitly …
Issue: November-December 2013
Five Questions with Professor Jia Liu
… Assistant professor of bioengineering Jia Liu received his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Harvard in 2014 and then completed postdoctoral research at Stanford from 2015 … encourage them to explore research directions that can surprise me—and they often accept this challenge and produce …
From the Archives: Unequal Incomes
… In an era of widening income inequality—with all it implies for … Freeman’s prescient, and still very pertinent, overview of the problems and challenges. His more recent essay for the … and professional athletes, to name the most prominent--have risen rapidly, while the earnings of the majority of the …
Hertzberg of the New Yorker
… On a January evening in 1977, at the old New Yorker offices on West 43rd Street, a going-away … topics in his office, where stacks of books on the floor rise to desktop height. "He lives undergraduate hours," says …
Issue: January-February 2003
The Causes of Long COVID
… Although Americans have survived more than 93 million cases of COVID-19, the disease is not yet fully understood. And for an … Whether the relative risk of developing long-term symptoms rises with each subsequent infection is not yet known. …
Issue: September-October 2022