July-August 2011

Letters
Right Now
Montage
Regional
John Harvard's Journal
Alumni
Pump
Treasure

Restaurants Rampant

Dining out is surging—yet there are reservations.
Mary Costelloe Berenson

Brief life of a Renaissance scholar: 1864-1945
Reefs at Risk

The world’s most fragile marine ecosystems are in decline.
Time to Electrify

Reducing our dependence on imported oil—while addressing the threat of climate change
Colleges in Crisis

Disruptive change comes to American higher education

Explore More

Christopher Cerf: Sound and Image

Excerpts from the educational television programs Between the Lions and Lomax, the Hound of Music

6.16.11

Video: An Operatic Honorary Degree

At Commencement, tenor and honorand Plácido Domingo surprises Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an opera fan, during the conferral of her degree.

5.26.11

“You Can’t Do It Alone”

Amid a stream of jokes, Amy Poehler delivers earnest advice to the class of 2011.

5.25.11

Montage

Cerf today with characters from <i>Between the Lions</i>

Channel Cerfing

With sound, image, and word, Chris Cerf teaches the basics.

Fakery and Shakespeare

A con man, his son, and a fiction on two levels

Sarah Hicks conducting the Minnesota Orchestra

A Baton with Sting

Conductor Sarah Hicks spans Prokofiev and the Police.

(Un)common Sense

Historian Sophia Rosenfeld examines the origins of politicians’ appeals to “common sense.”

Devoted to Debt

Nancy Koehn reviews Louis Hyman’s Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink.

Off the Shelf

Recent books with Harvard connections

Chapter and Verse

Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words

Letters

Cambridge 02138

The meaning of life, diabetes, Gandhi, burlesque

Right Now

Swerves

Stephen Greenblatt traces the influence of Lucretius, through De Rerum Natura, on modern thought.

Women and Alcohol

Studying the differences in addiction and recovery between men and women

George Whitesides and colleagues have discovered that they can extinguish a flame by pushing it off its fuel source, using an electric field that emanates from the tip of a wire.

Snuffing Flames with Electricity

Harvard scientists have discovered how to extinguish flames by pushing them off their fuel source with an electric field.

New England Regional

Celebrate Summer in New England

Forays within two hours’ drive of Boston

Do-it-yourself cuneiform at the Peabody Museum’s Wonders of Writing family event

Extracurriculars

Summer happenings at and around Harvard

Meals are served at two communal tables in the restored barn.

Rustic Charms

Conviviality, slow food, and the freshest herbs around

John Harvard's Journal

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences marshal Knatokie Marie Ford celebrates her Ph.D. in biological and biomedical sciences.

Commencement Witchcraft

Highlights from Harvard’s 360th Commencement

The 2011 honorary-degree recipients. Back row from left: John G.A. Pocock, Provost Steven Hyman, Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, President Drew Faust, Her Excellency Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, David Satcher, and Plácido Domingo. Front row from left: Dudley Herschbach, Rosalind Krauss, and James R. Houghton. Not pictured: The Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Honoris Causa

The honorary-degree recipients of 2011

Words to Live By

A sampling of Commencement week speeches

Commencement Confetti

An omnium-gatherum of notes and statistics, vital and otherwise

All hail the retiring provost, Steven E. Hyman.

Center of Attention

Human touches within Commencement’s pomp

The New Provost

An experienced Stanford administrator, an expert on health policy and economics, returns to take a big job at his alma mater.

Peter Der Manuelian

Meet Harvard’s resident Egyptologist.

From left to right: Lawrence S. Bacow, Susan L. Graham, and Joseph J. O'Donnell

Fellows Three

New members enlarge the Harvard Corporation

Lessons from Libya?

Faculty consulting for the Qaddafi government prompts a debate on academic principles.

Yesterday's News

Headlines from Harvard’s history

Marc Hauser’s Return

The psychology professor returns to Harvard, but not to teaching.

University People

Arrivals, appointments, awards

An <i>Atta sexdens</i> forager shears off a fragment.

Ants through the Ages

In two new books, E.O. Wilson and his coauthors introduce pioneer myrmecologist José Celestino Mutis, and the ants that are “the most complex socially of all animals, except for humans.”