March-April 2001 > John Harvard's Journal

Brevia

Michael E. Porter, M.B.A. ’71, Ph.D. ’73, a member of the Business School faculty since 1973 and an internationally recognized scholar of strategy and competitiven

Strategist-in-Chief

Michael E. Porter, M.B.A. ’71, Ph.D. ’73, a member of the Business School faculty since 1973 and an internationally recognized scholar of strategy and competitiveness, has been named Lawrence University Professor. Porter’s Competitive Strategy, something of a business bible, is in its fifty-third printing. He has also applied his ideas about strategy to other sectors and problems. The Competitive Advantage of Nations, published in 1990, established the framework for the influential Global Competitiveness Report, an annual assessment of countries’ business climate and growth prospects. Porter founded and is chairman and chief executive of the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, which seeks private investment to revitalize underserved urban markets (see "M.B.A.s Talk Trash," July- August 1996, page 64), and recently cofounded the Center for Effective Philanthropy, which seeks to improve charities’ performance.

 

Classical Calm

The final exam for Literature and Arts B-21, “The Images of Alexander the Great,” took an unexpected form. A man who identified himself as Kenneth E. Leong invaded Science Center B on the morning of January 18 and threatened to set off a bomb, causing the building to be evacuated. The suspect was subdued (and subsequently committed for a mental-health evaluation). David Gordon Mitten, Loeb professor of classical art and archaeology, who waited out the arrest with a teaching fellow and a student, told the Crimson, “This is an insult to Alexander!” For students, the added injury was the rescheduling of the exam in class on February 3, the first Saturday of spring term, or as an optional take-home due the following Monday.

 

More Crimson on the Hill

This magazine’s roundup of Harvard affiliates in the 107th Congress (January-February, page 69) overlooked Representative David Vitter ’83, Republican of Louisiana, who first entered Congress in June 1999 after winning a special election. His presence restores the Harvard contingent to 40 members, just as in the 106th Congress.

 

Nota Bene

Gould’s good-bye. After 27 years, Stephen Jay Gould concluded his column, “This View of Life,” in the December-January Natural History, the magazine’s centennial issue. This 300th column meditates on trees of life and so is of a piece with other work by Gould, who is professor of geology, Agassiz professor of zoology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, and curator of invertebrate paleontology in the MCZ (see "Off the Shelf," page 20).

 

In the family footsteps. No, Albert Gore Jr. ’69, LL.D. ’94, will not be attending Commencement as president of the United States and principal speaker, reprising the role he played as vice president in his twenty-fifth reunion year. Yes, if history holds, he will be on hand, this time to celebrate the graduation of daughter Sarah ’01, who follows sisters Karenna ’95 and Kristin ’99. Nor need this be the last such occasion: the Washington Post reports son Albert III was offered “early action” admission to the College class of 2005—which graduates after the next presidential election.

 

Around Harvard. To address the problems of conserving recent works of art, Carol Mancusi-Ungaro has been appointed director of the center for the technical study of modern art at Harvard University Art Museums and director of conservation at the Whitney Museum of American Art, in New York…Seth Effron, Nf ’92, returns to the Nieman Foundation for Journalism as deputy curator, a new position…The Hasty Pudding multigenerational 2001 man and woman of the year are Anthony Hopkins (The Silence of the Lambs, Nixon) and Drew Barrymore (E. T., Charlie’s Angels).



   

LANDSCAPE LODE. More than 660 sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Dutch landscape prints have been added to the Harvard University Art Museums collection, reinforcing the most extensive holdings of Dutch landscapes on paper in the United States. The new works, more than half donated and the rest acquired, comprise the Light-Outerbridge Collection, assembled by Robert M. Light, G ’52, L ’53, a prominent dealer in prints who studied at both the graduate and the law schools. His life’s partner, the late Donald G. Outerbridge ’46, a painter and photographer, interested Light in Dutch landscapes. The collection includes rare first-state etchings and complete sets of prints by Willem Buytewech, Jan van Brosterhuisen, Claes Jansz. Visscher, Geertruyd Roghman, and others. Shown is Nyenroy, Spring, by Hessel Gerrits (1581-1632). Courtesy of the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, Light-Outerbridge Collection. Photograph by Rick Stafford