Social Sciences


The Dark History Behind Chocolate

A Harvard course on the politics and culture of food

by Lydialyle Gibson

The Pandemic's Unequal Toll

A Radcliffe Institute online discussion of health disparities laid bare by coronavirus  

by Lydialyle Gibson

At Home with Harvard: Rewriting History

From race and colonization to genetics and paleohistory, our favorite stories about the people reshaping the study of history

The Risks of Homeschooling

Elizabeth Bartholet highlights risks when parents have 24/7 authoritarian control over their children.

by Erin O'Donnell

Frontiers...

Activity tracking to identify the at-risk elderly, and China’s offshore windfarm potential 

by Jonathan Shaw

From Lewis and Clark to Michael Brown

Walter Johnson’s radical history of St. Louis

by Marina N. Bolotnikova

The Federal Fisc

The politics, policymaking, and public consequences of mounting government debt—and how to cope with it

by Karen Dynan , Douglas Elmendorf

The World’s Costliest Health Care

Administrative costs, greed, overutilization—can these drivers of U.S. medical costs be curbed?

by David Cutler

Taking the Plunge

The Business School’s Rebecca Henderson reimagines capitalism to save the planet.

The Hollowing Out

Americans diminished by “social poverty”

by Allison Pugh

Second Chances in CS50

In a paper aimed at fellow educators, David Malan reports on interventions designed to teach academic honesty in the wildly popular introductory computer science course he teaches at Harvard. 

by Jonathan Shaw