September-October 2001

DOES HARVARD REALLY WANT COLLECTIVE BARGAINING? "Living wage" proponents, sitting in at Massachusetts Hall last spring…

Odysseus struggled to resist the Sirens. Adam Smith warned of dangerous passions for profusion. And we have all, despite our diets, succumbed to…

If we build it, we lay the groundwork for acts of mass destruction and violence toward mankind. But if we don’t build it, we leave ourselves…

In 1688 a Swiss doctor, Johannes Hofer, identified a new medical syndrome, nostalgia: "the sad mood originating from the desire for return…

Illustration by Bartek Malysa Perhaps the second-most-cultivated plant in Elizabethan England, after wheat, was hemp—Cannabis sativa…

October 31, 2000, 4 p.m. I’ve just had one of those brief but potent conversations in which a casual comment by someone I scarcely know hits me…

Readers of this hefty work will frequently think of Samuel Johnson on Paradise Lost: "None ever wished it longer than it is." But they…

Visions of Spaceflight: Images from the Ordway Collection, selected and with an introduction by Frederick I. Ordway III ’49 (Four Walls Eight…

James Lyon asks for the source of the poem: "I know not to what strange and mystic ends/Fate willed that I survived my friends;/Though in a…

In both 1949 and 1950 Harvard won only a single football game; in 1951 Yale won just two. Princeton, however, "had used its alumni to…

As Harvard raises new buildings and begins thinking about its future presence on its Allston properties, will it conform to the prevailing…

Chip Samuels is blowing up trophy houses on Cape Cod in Spectacular Happiness (Scribner, $25), a novel by Peter D. Kramer ’70, M.D. ’76…

SPECIAL. The thirty-second annual ice skating exhibition An Evening with Champions, organized by the students at Eliot House, takes place at the…

As fuel costs skyrocket and concerns grow about the world’s energy resources, the idea of creating a more energy-efficient home becomes more…

Three decades ago, Davis Square in Somerville was the pits. A Cambridge matron who lives nearby recalls walking her children over there for ice…

  by William H. Hogan A decade ago, California, along with other states and federal policymakers, began to rethink its approach to the…

Cabot in a caribou-skin coat. A sampling of his photographs of the Naskapi and their homeland is below. All images © William Brooks…

Traditionally, the best tickets put you nearest the action, but here in the skybox, we look down, as if from an aerie, on the baseball game…

Harvard University hadn’t been my first choice for post-graduate English studies, and I wouldn’t have been there if the University of London had…

There was a single birch tree that had overtopped the other trees on the island, and was now picked out against the moon-drenched sky. It was…

Lawrence H. Summers became the University’s twenty-seventh president on Sunday, July 1. Next day, photographers visited his office in…

Things are different at Fay House. As the academic year begins, Drew Gilpin Faust, the Civil War historian who is the first dean of the…

The Radcliffe Institute’s 2001-2002 fellows include a sculptor, a filmmaker, a painter, and two composers; a poet, a novelist, two playwrights…

As Harvard raises new buildings and begins thinking about its future presence on its Allston properties, will it conform to the prevailing…

Photograph by Rose Lincoln Across from Don Share’s desk hangs a photograph of Robert Lowell ’37, Litt.D. ’66, the poet Share…

The future of professional education at Harvard promises much closer interaction between professors and students, especially during their…

Butch Thunderhawk, a Hunkpapa Sioux artist, and his colleague Wayne Pruse, both of the United Tribes Technical College in Bismarck, North…

When he was a graduate student at Harvard, recalls Richard Light, Ph.D. ’69, resources for learning how to teach were scarce. As a budding…

Harvard hums with research. In the fiscal year ended June 30, 2000, the University received $429 million in sponsored-research support…

The committee appointed May 8 by then-president Neil L. Rudenstine to study wages and job opportunities for Harvard’s lower-paid workers is…

Can political scientists devise formulas to predict the outbreak of war? Although the notion seems far-fetched, James Alt wants you to say…

One of the trying rituals faced by a newly arrived freshman at Harvard is that of endless introduction. It is almost impossible not to feel…

Money Managers Move For the fourth time since 1998, a group of Harvard Management Company (HMC) investment professionals have decamped, seeking…

Photograph by Stu Rosner The students who will serve as Harvard Magazine’s 2001-2002 Berta Greenwald Ledecky Undergraduate Fellows—both…

Record-breaking passer Rose, going aerial last fall Photograph courtesy Harvard Sports Information Talk about spectacular entrances: In…

Bob Scalise Courtesy Harvard Sports Information In 1978, Harvard won the Ivy League’s first women’s soccer championship, and that…

Stephen B. Howell Photomontage by Bartek Malysa On a breezy San Diego evening, Stephen B. Howell, M.D. ’70, dons his white coat and begins…

New HAA president Karen Spencer Kelly ’80 Photograph by Justin Allardyce Knight Karen Spencer Kelly ’80 opened her first speech as…

Applauded Established in 1990, the Harvard Alumni Association Awards recognize alumni who provide exemplary volunteer service to the University…

Eason Cross ’47, M.Arch. ’51, has an architectural project in mind, although he may not be able to get to it as soon as he would like. He wants…

How many Harvard graduates have a job description that includes "quiz-show panelist"? If you guessed "At least one," go on…

Harvard has infiltrated such unlikely enclaves as Hollywood and the National Football League; now it is making inroads on Seventh Avenue…

1936 Harvard adopts a new parietal rule, stating that "Students living in the Houses will be given permission to entertain ladies in their…

"Your wooden arm you hold outstretched to shake with passers-by." Harvard’s arrogance, and its just rewards, are the topics of…

One day in 1820 amateur naturalists Elijah Hamlin and Ezekiel Holmes were poking around on a hill in Paris, Maine, in the southwestern part…