Harvard Magazine
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Cryptic PuzzlesSolve the March-April 2008 puzzle! Hints available soon. |
Recent PostsSeptember 3, 2008 • Breaking NewsHarvard Basketball Program ExoneratedAn inquiry by the Ivy League into allegations of improper recruiting and lowering of academic standards by the Harvard men’s basketball program has determined that no violations of either NCAA or Ivy League rules occurred. More >> September 1, 2008 • Cryptic PuzzlesCrimson In Triumph
E-mail the theme phrase to John de Cuevas by September 20, and we will post your name below, in order of date solved Check back on September 20, 2008 for the hints and solution. You can find all 35 puzzles published in Harvard Magazine between 1986 and 1998 at John de Cuevas’s website—puzzlecrypt.com—under Harvard Puzzles. You will also find additional puzzles and contact information there and can subscribe to his mailing list. August 28, 2008 • Alumni WritersPoliticking as Crimson-Hued Blood SportAs a doctoral candidate in Harvard’s government department, Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D. ’72, was a nuanced writer. His dissertation, “Prior Restraint, Prior Punishment, and Political Dissent: A Moral and Legal Evaluation,” carefully explored the issues associated with “the question of the extent to which we can legitimately demand that the liberal state tolerate internal political activism.” His argument—with special thanks to his advisers, professors Michael Walzer and Arthur Sutherland, and further thanks to legal scholars Paul Freund and Laurence Tribe—came at a fraught time in the nation’s history, just after the confrontations of the civil-rights era, the street demonstrations and violence at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968, and the turmoil associated with protest against the Vietnam War. Having examined court opinions in a variety of situations, Corsi found little support for limits on association (mandating disclosure of group membership, for example), for investigations of political activists, or for any but the most careful uses of injunctions and temporary restraining orders—and no usage consistent with political freedom for preventive detention as “either the exception or the rule.” Corsi could imagine extreme circumstances where state intervention would be possible, but he stressed the responsibilities of public officials to keep avenues of dissent open, and of dissidents to avoid abusing rights, lest on either side those rights be fatally compromised at moments of crisis. “Rights of dissent have always been incredibly fragile,” Corsi concluded. “We can write words numbering in the hundreds of thousands defining these rights and establishing rules for their maintenance. However, their continuance will always ultimately rest upon the restraint and respect of political activists and government authorities alike.” Somehow, in the years since, Corsi has segued from political science to a different kind of political art, and has found different purposes for his prolific writings—and a much different tone for them. As author of Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry, he led the 2004 attempt to destroy the character and reputation of the Democratic presidential candidate. His current bestseller, the slyly titled The Obama Nation, aiming at Barack Obama, J.D. ’91, the 2008 Democratic nominee, furthers Corsi’s reputation of aiming for the jugular with an axe. Though much of the effect of such publications is as grist for the most partisan radio talk shows, they prompt debate more broadly as well, given their political significance. And so it was that Hendrik Hertzberg ’65 took on Corsi in “Attack-Dog Days,” his lead “Comment” in the September 1 issue of The New Yorker. Hertzberg, profiled in the January-February 2003 issue of this magazine, commands a sharp pen himself. “The Obama Nation,” he writes, “erects a superstructure of innuendo, guilt by (often nonexistent) association, baseless speculation, and sinister-sounding but irrelevant digression. The result is an example of what used to be known, in the glory days of ideologically driven totalitarianism, as the Big Lie—in this case, a fabricated, alternate-universe Barack Obama, who, we are told or invited to infer, is a corrupt, enraged, anti-American, drug-dealing, anti-Israel, pseudo-Christian radical leftist, black militant, plagiarist, and liar, trained as a Muslim and mentored by a menagerie of Marxists, Communists, crypto-Communists, and terrorists.” Putting Corsi’s recent work in context, Hertzberg writes:
At all levels of debate, high and low, the campaign ahead appears headed for rough talk and tactics, with Harvard participants across the spectrum. August 27, 2008 • Breaking NewsA Startling Achievement in Regenerative MedicineDouglas Melton, co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, has figured out how to transform one type of cell in a living animal into another, using a new process his research team has dubbed “direct reprogramming.” More >> August 26, 2008 • Web ExtrasA Window on BeijingThe Olympics focused global attention generally on air pollution in China, and particularly on air quality in Beijing. For visual evidence of the state of the skies in Beijing, check the photographs and commentary provided here by James Fallows ’70. More >> August 26, 2008 • Web ExtrasCamp Cooking, and ChildrenReading from his own works, longtime New Yorker writer Ian Frazier ’73 recounts the perils of preparing “breakfast in a paper bag” and elucidates some colorful realities of living with offspring. More >> August 26, 2008 • Web ExtrasA Ringing FarewellAfter 78 years, the Russian bells of Lowell House are headed back to their former home at the Danilov Monastery in Moscow. More >> August 26, 2008 • Web ExtrasEcophilic InitiativesThe University will cut its net greenhouse-gas emissions by 30 percent during the next eight years, President Drew Faust vowed in a July 8 announcement. This is Harvard’s first-ever commitment to bring emissions below a specific level, but during the past several years, the University and its constituent parts have been going green in other ways. More >> August 26, 2008 • Web ExtrasHow They Built Houses in JapanIn 1979, to commemorate 20 years of partnership between the sister cities of Boston and Kyoto, 43 enormous crates arrived at the Boston Children’s Museum. The crates contained, in bits and pieces, a nineteenth-century, kyo-machiya style townhouse of the sort used as workshop and dwelling by Kyoto merchants. Carpenters from Japan accompanied the boxes and spent months in the museum, diligently putting the house back together for permanent display. More >> August 22, 2008 • Harvard in the NewsHarvard Tops U.S. News RankingsU.S. News & World Report released its annual college rankings today, with Harvard at the top—the first time the University has ranked number one, by itself rather than tied with another school, in a dozen years, according to the Boston Globe. As the Globe’s Peter Schworm notes, in grandiose language, Harvard has finished second to Princeton for the last two years, but “today, order has been restored to the universe, with Harvard University again master of all it surveys.” (Princeton and Yale rank second and third this year, respectively.) While there may be rejoicing in some corners, University spokesman Robert Mitchell gave the Globe a tempered response: ”It’s always nice to be recognized in this way. However, our admissions officers always tell prospective students that they should select a college that best suits their needs, not by its position in a ranking.” U.S. News does not explain why it moves individual schools up or down, but gives a general explanation of how it formulates the rankings. The criteria include financial resources, alumni giving, graduation rate, selectivity in admissions, and evaluation of the institution by administrators at peer institutions. Harvard had the lowest acceptance rate of any school on the list, admitting just 9 percent of applicants. The rankings are based on the admissions cycle for the class that entered a year ago; as Harvard Magazine previously reported, competition for this fall’s freshman class was even stiffer—the College received 27,278 applications, up 19 percent over the previous year. View the list of schools by rank on the U.S. News & World Report site, or read the Boston Globe article about the rankings. |
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