Alumni & People

curation of alumni people, faculty and student profiles

Conan O’Brien in a dark suit and light shirt, smiling and posing with hands clasped.

Conan O’Brien Named Harvard’s 2026 Commencement Speaker

The comedian, host, and 1985 graduate will deliver remarks at the May 28 ceremony. 

by Schuyler Velasco

Harvard Overseer and HAA director elections

The official 2020 slates

Frontiers

Activity tracking to identify the at-risk elderly, and China’s offshore windfarm potential 

by Jonathan Shaw

Image of sign on Adams House faculty dean residence

The College Pump

Houseboating in Boston Harbor, Apthorp North, and clothing counts

by Primus VI

Photograph of Susan Murphy

Susan Murphy

Portrait of a hockey-playing statistician—from Louisiana

by Lydialyle Gibson

Harvard students in caps and gowns enjoying Commencement

Harvard’s Virtual Commencement

Harvard’s 369th Commencement goes virtual.

A stylized plot of Lorenz's "butterfly effect" model against a black background with gold-toned curves wrapping themselves around unshown x and y axes, resembling the wings of a butterfly

The Undergraduate on power and the denial of scholarship

A student scientist contemplates power and the denial of scholarship.

by Drew Pendergrass

fencers celebrate a championship win

Harvard fencing squad update

How Harvard fencers won an Ivy championship

by Jacob Sweet

The St. Louis, Missouri, skyline on the Mississippi River with the Gateway Arch visible, as seen from across the Mississippi River in East St. Louis, Illinois

Walter Johnson writes about “The Broken Heart of America”

Walter Johnson’s radical history of St. Louis

by Marina N. Bolotnikova

Posthumous portrait of astronomer Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin looking up and through a window, echoing Vermeer’s painting “The Astronomer”

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

Brief life of a breakthrough astronomer: 1900-1979

by Donovan Moore

Photograph of copies of the federal budget fiscal year 2021

Ways to cope with the federal debt

The politics, policymaking, and public consequences of mounting government debt—and how to cope with it

by Karen Dynan , Douglas Elmendorf