Letters

Cambridge 02138

SPECTRUM OF AUTISM OPINIONS As the parent of a child with autism and a writer on the subject for About.com, I enjoyed reading “A Spectrum...

March-April 2008

Features

Saving Money, Oil, and the Climate

The United States is in urgent need of a comprehensive, rational, and—above all—honest policy to guide its energy future, a policy...

Toward a Liberal Realist Foreign Policy

On January 20, you will inherit a legacy of trouble: Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Palestine, North Korea for starters. Failure to manage any one of...

Trails of Tears, and Hope

The hamlet of Alkali Lake, about 100 miles north of Vancouver, is home to one of a handful of surviving Shuswap bands of Native Americans in...

by Craig Lambert

Ko K'un-hua

Yale was the first American college to offer instruction in Chinese, in 1877; apparently, no one signed up. The next year, a group of Boston and...

The Physics of the Familiar

Photograph by Jim Harrison Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan “Just because something is familiar doesn’t mean you understand it. That...

by Jonathan Shaw

RIGHT NOW Harvard research and ideas

"Born Digital"

Forty years ago they were “Born Free,” 20 years ago they were “Born in the U.S.A.,” but today kids are born digital, and...

Life's Speed Limit

Mutation is the engine of evolution: organisms would not be able to evolve new characteristics if their DNA did not randomly acquire small...

When Minnie Turns Mickey

If males are from Mars and females from Venus, as self-help author John Gray memorably suggested, sex hormones usually get the blame for placing...

"Tyrant Fever's" Trigger

When an infection assails the body, the response is predictable. Fever, loss of appetite, fatigue, that achy feeling—we never get just one...

John Harvard's Journal University news

Law School, Looming Larger

Photograph by Jim Harrison (View larger) Subsurface construction proceeds on Harvard Law School's northwest building, which extends along...

Boosting College Financial Aid

Harvard’s new undergraduate financial-aid policies, affecting even students from high-income families, were announced on December...

Raising the Ante

In the wake of Harvard’s December announcement, a host of other institutions—Haverford, Penn, Pomona, and Swarthmore among...

David Charbonneau

On camping trips in northern Ontario as a Boy Scout, David Charbonneau, Ph.D. ’01, Cabot associate professor of astronomy, remembers...

Gains for Graduate Students

Harvard’s new formula for undergraduate financial aid, unveiled on December 10, overshadowed its consequential changes in support for...

Yesterday's News

 1923 The committee examining Harvard’s admissions process discourages giving preferential treatment to alumni children because...

The Talking Cure

For decades, insurers and risk-management departments have told doctors that if they make a mistake, the last thing they should do is admit it...

Inevitable Mistakes, Avoidable Harm

The culture of medicine has long tried to keep doctors from making mistakes by indoctrinating them to believe that they shouldn’t make...

A Century of Commerce

Harvard Business School (HBS) is throwing a year-long centennial celebration. The anniversary itself falls on April 8, the date in 1908 when the...

Doctoral Director

Allan M. Brandt became dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS), within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), on January 1. A...

Focusing on the Ph.D.

During her tenure as dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS), from mid 2005 through last December, Theda Skocpol says, “I...

Brevia

Endowment Manager EarningsHarvard Management Company’s (HMC) annual disclosure of the salary, bonus, and benefit payments to its president...

Off Harvard Time

Many Harvard undergraduates give personal happiness and reflective decision-making short shrift in the race for academic accolades and...

150 Years of Glee

During its first international tour, in 1921, the Harvard Glee Club inspired French composers Francis Poulenc and Darius Milhaud to write new...

Stick, Helmet, and Butterfly

Hockey parents, they say, don’t like their kids to become goalies because goaltenders wear so much costly protective equipment. But those...

Crimson Queens of the Rink

The women’s hockey team ended January with a perfect 14-0 record in the ECAC, and a 17-1-0 record overall, earning them the top ranking in...

Montage Books, creative arts, performance and more

Sweet Science

At the Leverett House Grill in the late 1980s, Joanne Chang ’91 first turned pro as a baker, selling four freshly baked chocolate chip...

Off the Shelf

How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now (Free Press, $35), by James L. Kugel, formerly Starr professor of Hebrew literature...

Moving Pictures, Hard Questions

It was a rare rainy night in Los Angeles. Filling up his tank at a local gas station, a man noticed the silhouette of another man, just beyond...

Not Groucho (but Way Funny)

For a long time, Patricia Marx ’75 assumed she “would wake up in the suburbs with three kids and a mother hairdo.” It...

Postmodern Medicine

We are all “medical citizens,” embedded as potential or actual patients, with physicians, in a system of social, moral, and...

Past the Peak

Nearly 50 years after declaring their independence, Americans were electrified by the triumphant return of the Marquis de Lafayette, eager to...

Storytelling Spaces

Set designer Derek McLane (Harvard ’80) has designed stages for "Grease," "Guys and Dolls," "The Pajama Game," and Pulitzer Prize-winning "I Am My Own Wife," and many other plays.

Chapter & Verse

Suzanne Ekman hopes someone can identify a source for the following line, possibly from a Mark Van Doren poem: “…but where were...

Almuni Harvardians far and wide

Wartime Legalities

At 6 a.m. in western Baghdad, the thermometer has already punched through 100 degrees across the barren lands around Camp Victory. As Colonel...

Vote Now

This spring, alumni will choose five new Harvard Overseers and six new elected directors for the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) board. Ballots...

GSAS Alumni Day

On April 5, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni and their guests are invited to a day-long celebration featuring afternoon symposiums on...

HAA Clubs Committee Awards

The HAA clubs committee Awards honor individuals who provide exemplary service to a Harvard club or shared interest group (SIG), as well as...

The Harvard Club of Boston Turns 100

The Harvard Club of Boston, founded “to give effective expression to the Harvard spirit,” kicked off its centennial celebration with...

Return to Harvard Day

On April 16, all College alumni and their spouses/partners and high-school-age offspring can visit the College, attend classes, and meet faculty...

Harvard in Chicago

The Harvard Club of Chicago, the oldest continually operating Harvard club in existence, celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2007. The year-long...