Features

A woman gazes at large decorative letters with her reflection and two stylized faces beside them.

The True Cost of Grade Inflation at Harvard

How an abundance of A’s created “the most stressed-out world of all.”

by Lindsay Mitchell

Lev Gleason

Brief life of comics impresario Leverett Gleason

Brief life of a comics impresario: 1898-1971

by Brett Dakin

Andrew Sullivan in his “blog cave”

Profile of Andrew Sullivan, blogger supreme

Andrew Sullivan’s views are predictable in only one way: always stimulating.

by Jesse Kornbluth

Wallace Shawn

Profile of actor and playwright Wallace Shawn

Ubiquitous on film and TV, Wallace Shawn writes plays that pack the house—with 20.

by Craig Lambert

Brief life of female Vietnamese revolutionary Bao Luong

Brief life of a Vietnamese revolutionary: 1909-1976

by Hue-Tam Ho Tai

Louis Kunkel in his laboratory at Children’s Hospital

Louis Kunkel’s 30-year quest to diagnose and cure muscular dystrophy

Louis Kunkel’s 30-year quest to diagnose and cure muscular dystrophy

by Victor McElheny

Thomas Wolfe and Gertrude Stein

Yale expert Fred Shapiro's pick of choice Harvard quotations

An expert's pick of choice Harvard words

by Fred Shapiro

Matthew Nock sits in his lab’s control room, where researchers record subjects’ behavioral and physiological responses during experiments. For example, they might measure whether people who engage in self-injury show greater emotional distress, in response to frustrating tasks, than people who do not. (Nock’s lab manager and a postdoctoral fellow are seen in the adjoining room through one-way glass.)

Matthew Nock studies suicide and self-injury

Understanding suicide and self-injury

by Elizabeth Gudrais

Bernardo Flores, Rafael Tapajós, and Hannah Horowitz ’11 learn how to analyze data gathered from a weather balloon under the supervision of Professor Steven Wofsy

Harvard scholars study the Amazon rainforest under global climate change

Students grapple with the fate of the rainforest in a changing climate.

by Jonathan Shaw

Kermit "Kim" Roosevelt in 1950

Brief life of Harvard CIA agent who helped install the shah of Iran

Brief life of a Harvard conspirator: 1916-2000

by Gwen Kinkead

A skull session with human evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman in the fossil room at the Peabody Museum. Millions of years of natural selection have shaped the human head. From left to right: a Neanderthal; <i>Homo erectus; Homo habilis; Australopithecus africanus; Pan troglodytes</i> (common chimpanzee); <i>Homo sapiens</i> (human). “Gonzo,” a Neanderthal skeleton, stands in the back.

Daniel Lieberman on the Evolution of the Human Head

How the shape of our skulls evolved, and what that reveals about us

by Jonathan Shaw