Features
The True Cost of Grade Inflation at Harvard
How an abundance of A’s created “the most stressed-out world of all.”
Brief life of ornithologist and writer William Brewster, by Alan Emmet
William Brewster was too frail, his eyesight too poor, said his parents and doctors, for him to attend Harvard. Instead, early each morning, he...
The Undiscovered Planet
All images courtesy of Roberto Kolter, unless otherwise noted Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton—these are familiar names. During a...
Two Women, Two Histories
As the second world war drew to a close, two women thought about applying to Harvard Law School. The first was an African-American native of...
White marble sculptures of antiquity
The English essayist and critic William Hazlitt gazed on the white marble sculptures of antiquity and thought them cold. “[T]he finest...
Honorable Forester
Peter Shaw Ashton stepped into his first Asian tropical forest 50 years ago last March. For what he has accomplished in those steamy reaches, he...
Writing as Performance
The first and perhaps the most important requirement for a successful writing performance—and writing is a performance, like singing an...
Gordon McKay
Brief life of an inventor with a lasting Harvard legacy: 1821-1903
Bricks & Politics
Every year, on a hot summer day, 10 Boston-area architects pile into a van together and drive around for hours looking for beauty. Lately, at...
A Scholar in the House
Tradition and the twenty-first century were tangled together in Barker Center’s Thompson Room on the afternoon of February 11, when Drew...
Stanley Hoffmann profile
From Vichy to Iraq with a widely cultured "citizen of Harvard"