March-April 2009

Back Issues
  • The Developing Child
    With a new interdisciplinary center, Harvard turns its focus to the earliest years of life.
  • Reopening the Doors to College
    The United States must refresh the marriage of excellence and opportunity that characterizes American higher education at its best, argue sociologists Theda Skocpol and Suzanne Mettler.
  • A Yodel for Help in the Modern World
    Playwright Christopher Durang, a “native American absurdist,” writes black comedies that turn painful events into hilarity.
  • Fernando Zóbel de Ayala
    A brief profile of the peripatetic painter and philanthropist

Explore More

Video: Sanatorium Scenes

A new documentary combines archival photographs and footage, interviews with former patients, and expert commentary to remember the tuberculosis epidemic in the United States.
2.18.09

Helping Those Most in Need

With support from the Center on the Developing Child, Harvard scholars aim to help some of the most vulnerable groups of children.
2.18.09

Montage

Grandiose dreamer Bronson Alcott impoverished his family—but spurred Louisa’s imagination.

The Alcotts, Père and Fille

John Matteson, who left the law to pursue literature, won a Pulitzer Prize for Eden’s Outcasts, his double biography of Bronson and Louisa May Alcott.

From Literature to the Lab

In this excerpt from his new book, The Art and Politics of Science, Nobel laureate Harold Varmus reflects on his switch from graduate work in English to medical school.
Year-round fresh air and sunlight were seen as curative in the early 1900s. Children at tuberculosis sanatoriums, including Wallum Lake (shown here), were sent outside barely clothed, even in winter.

A Scourge Remembered

A new film by G. Wayne Miller looks back to a time when tuberculosis gripped America.

Letters

Right Now

Save Yourself

Harvard Business School’s Peter Tufano says simplifying savings-bond purchases for small savers will benefit citizens and government alike.

Our Psychotropic Lives

History professor Daniel Lord Smail explores the role of psychotropic mechanisms in human evolution and history.

The Internet: Foe of Democracy?

The Internet, by allowing like-minded individuals to self-segregate, has had a polarizing effect on democracy, suggests Harvard Law School’s Cass Sunstein..
Comedian Richard Pryor sends up the image of a “primitive” in this 1968 photograph, which appears on the cover of Laughing Fit to Kill.

Laughing at Slavery

In Laughing Fit to Kill: Black Humor in the Fictions of Slavery, Glenda Carpio describes how slavery has provided a background and a source of raw material for African-American humor.

New England Regional

Rich colors and paintings by Latin American artists add to Merengue’s vibrancy.

Latin Flair

Merengue brings authentic Caribbean/Latin American-style food to Boston.

John Harvard's Journal

In the Hole

Harvard assesses the feasibility of completing capital projects now under way, and the timing of other parts of its institutional master plan.

The Fiscal Crunch

Harvard and its schools are preparing for broad and potentially deep cost reductions.
Student artists at work in the Carpenter Center

A Vision for the Arts

A University-wide task force recommends new degree programs, courses, and spaces for art production.
John Briscoe

John Briscoe

John Briscoe will reestablish an engineering program at Harvard focused on water.
This map shows soil types for all of Africa. A researcher might use it with other map layers to study agricultural productivity among countries with similar soils, comparing, for example, the agrarian practices of Francophone and Anglophone countries.

Mapping Africa

Africa Map, a project of Harvard’s Center for Geographic Analysis, brings GIS capabilities to research on the entire continent.

Decisionmaking, Measured

A new interdisciplinary decision-science lab will host experiments from psychology, economics, and beyond.

Brevia

News of the University and the Harvard community

Life in Detail

Of archives, libraries, personal memories, and Sylvia Plath
Jeremy Lin

Hoops Houdini

Star shooting guard Jeremy Lin excels in nearly every phase of basketball.

Alumni

Robert Burke

Tax Tutors

Robert Burke’s nonprofit Ladder Up offers tax help and financial advice to the working poor.

Vote Now

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

News and Notices

Comings and Goings; Return to Harvard Day; and a special notice regarding Harvard’s Commencement Exercises

Treasure

The College Pump

Drat Those Vandals!

A vandalized pump, a fumbled swearing-in, and lessons about life from Professor John H. Finley
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