July-August 2000

Harvard certainly knows how to mark significant milestones. At the end of this academic year, the University had suitable reasons to throw not…

Communications from our readers

A phrase that applies to just about every surgical procedure might be “This is going to get worse before it gets better.” Surgeons themselves…

When professor of psychiatry Harrison G. Pope Jr. ’69, M.P.H. ’72, M.D. ’74, began lifting weights in 1980, it was seen as “rare and exotic…

Neighborhoods are the building blocks of a metropolitan area. But neighborhoods are not identical units, such as bricks; quite dissimilar, they…

By now firemen, policemen, and mailmen sound like cultural relics from the 1950s next to the no-nonsense firefighters, police officers, and…

In the last five years, the idea of finding planets orbiting other stars has gone from a science-fiction fantasy to a reality frequently…

Thinking about civic engagement

The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst, by David Nasaw (Houghton Mifflin, $35). When Hearst moved into Matthews Hall in Harvard Yard in…

Commencement speeches, according to cartoonist Garry Trudeau, “were invented largely in the belief that outgoing college students should never…

Gerard Lenthall wishes to learn the identity of “Garamaz,” a 1938 reference. Thomas Lemann would like a source for words attributed to…

Monastic Time/Harvard Time Each June for the past six years, Robert Kiely, Ph.D. ’62, has been a guest at an Italian monastery for a…

For some music lovers, it may be a relief when the 250th anniversary of the death of Johann Sebastian Bach passes on July 28. Though he has…

Darting around his living room, Brad Washburn ’33, L.H.D. ’75, shows a visitor excerpts from his latest manuscript and copies of his alpine…

The summertime in Cambridge is a chance to savor life’s all too swiftly passing moments. Take some time to spread out a picnic on the banks of…

One talent distinguishes the few chefs who are truly gifted from those who are merely fine cooks: imagination. Take something as simple as that…

Jorge I. Domínguez, Dillon professor of international affairs and director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard…

Since Fidel Castro took power, direct travel and communications between the United States and Cuba have been proscribed. But academic and…

Last November, June Carolyn Erlick spent three weeks in Cuba…

On Saturday morning, May 13, the dull gray of the sky over Cambridge brightened the white dogwood beside the Faculty Club, colored more deeply…

A few years ago, in this very theater, we began a major undertaking together, and we did so without knowing quite how, or perhaps even whether…

Technology and the transformation of identity, community, and commerce   Moderator: Sherry Turkle ’69, Ph.D. ’76, professor of the…

When he died at the age of 32, Kenneth Ichiro Miyata, Ph.D. ’80, was one of the most famous fly-fishermen in the world. But even those who had…

        …sed carmina tantum nostra valent, Lycida, tela inter Martia, quantum Chaonias dicunt aquila…

The motives that drew me to war were many. They included a longing for the exotic adventure denied to kids who …

Rain never falls on a Harvard Commencement, but it descended in Biblical volume on the Phi Beta Kappa and baccalaureate processions two days…

Honorary degrees

Student linen-crew workers made up the dorm beds that would welcome reunioners. Some beds were then changed as alumni departed and new ones…

The principal speakers during Commencement week 2000 said much about the value of reasoned inquiry, the importance of universities as a home for…

Neil L. Rudenstine, whose service as Harvard’s twenty-sixth president began July 1, 1991, announced on May 22 that he would step down at the end…

New technologies, changing demographics, and the emergence of richly funded, Internet-based e-learning ventures may lead to serious upheavals…

In an exaltation of deans, the acting dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the institute’s dean-elect welcomed dean of…

Big building projects head back to the drawing board

Prize professors…

Dean moves on

Who owns Harvard courses? Professors? The University?…

Harvard Medical School has decided for now not to liberalize its rules…

Student protests then and now

Paying and training low-wage employees decently

Romance in the Houses… An Allston Addition…

I’ve always had difficulty with conclusions. Writing a 101-page senior thesis may have only made my problem worse. I should have heeded the…

Swooping left, then right, now cruising straight ahead at the speed of a fresh gale, then suddenly diving into a hollow and rising up together…

Spring sports roundup

Not too long ago, Daniel Saul ’95 left his “respectable” job as a management consultant with Booz•Allen & Hamilton in New York and…

The oldest alumna

Election winners…

Alain de Vergie ’56 finds it entertaining and informative to scan the want ads…

1915 Massachusetts Hall is refitted as a lecture hall…

Robert Shenton, Ph.D. ’62, who died in February (see “Brevia,” May-June, page 72), was secretary of the Governing Boards from 1971 to 1991…

The legendary explorer was at home behind the camera. Barging on the seine this summer? Don’t forget your plant-hunting gear and your…