Your independent source for Harvard news since 1898

Your independent source for Harvard news since 1898

May-June 2007

Download a PDF

Letters

Critic Frank Rich Craig Lambert writes (“Reviewing ‘Reality,’” March-April, page 40) that New York Times columnist...

The College Pump

"Your wooden arm you hold outstretched to shake with passers-by." Baseball fan Philip J. Lowry ’71, M.B.A. ’79, of...

Treasure

“Chinese emperors were expected to be cultured gentlemen, whether they were or not,” says Robert D. Mowry, Dworsky curator of...

In this Issue

Illustration by Tom Mosser

Here is an image calculated to ruffle the feathers of all red-blooded Americans: Consuming on credit, reluctant to go to the front line...

Portrait bust of Wendell Phillips by Martin Milmore (1869)

Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution/Art Resorce, New York

Wendell Phillips on a platform,” wrote Henry Adams in his Education, “was a model dangerous for youth.” In this opinion Adams...

Photograph by Maxim Marmur, Reuters/CORBIS

Who is Mr. Putin?” The question reverberated in world capitals when Boris Yeltsin called a press conference on August 9, 1999, to...

Near Winterhaven, California, an official sign faces south to warn illegal immigrants of dangers in the desert trek—heat, rugged terrain, rattlesnakes, lack of drinking water, a chance of drowning in a nearby canal—adding that it is not worth the risk.

In 1986, after receiving amnesty under the Immigration Reform and Control Act, Jorge Montes began looking for a good place to raise his family...

Letters

Critic Frank Rich Craig Lambert writes (“Reviewing ‘Reality,’” March-April, page 40) that New York Times columnist...

Right Now

Since the 1920s, commercial dairies have milked lactating cows through most of their subsequent pregnancies. Milk from such cows contains high levels of estrogen hormones and other growth factors.

Photograph by Carla M. Cataldi/Associated Press

The milk we drink today may not be nature’s perfect food,” says Ganmaa Davaasambuu, a Mongolian physician who is a fellow this year...

Illustration by Nicholas Wilton

In a single undergraduate course last fall, students tackled all of the following: engineering nanofood particles to combat childhood obesity...

Photograph by Sean Justice, Iconica/Getty Images

A lotion that tans your skin without exposure to the sun and protects you against skin cancer sounds like the sort of miracle product...

Illustration by Robert Neubecker

Our minds favor hawks over doves, argues a recent Foreign Policy article. Past psychological research has shown that when it comes to the...

John Harvard's Journal

Photograph by Jim Harrison

Photograph by Jim Harrison [view larger photograph] Seen from atop William James Hall (and in detailed views below), the...

Although she will not move into the president’s office in Massachusetts Hall until July 1, President-elect Drew Gilpin Faust has launched...

Photograph by Jim Harrison

David Williams studies how social factors affect health. Education and income affect health, that’s clear. But why, as is the case, should...

Why are doctors from Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital working with Harvard astrophysicists? And why is Professor Jeff Lichtman...

Every Tuesday afternoon at the Kennedy School of Government, over lunch, a group of 10 people debates ethical questions that, in one form or...

  Ungraded freshmen seminars, introduced in 1959, were intended to introduce new College students to faculty members and to a...

Harvard proposes to put shovels in the ground not only to build a new campus in Allston but, far more modestly, to put up a research and...

Illustration by Mark Steele

1912 Mrs. George D. Widener reveals plans to build a library at Harvard in memory of her son, Harry Elkins Widener ’07, who perished with...

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) has grown more in the past nine years than in the previous four decades. In a letter distributed to...

How do you play a broken record? “Take a picture of it,” says audio engineer David Ackerman, who heads the Audio Preservation...

Slow down, please, said community members comprising the Harvard-Allston Task Force. May we take things one at a time? Of course, said Harvard...

Is a blastocyst—an early-stage human embryo—a person? As part of the University’s efforts to encourage public dialogue about...

Top Billing for Two Bills   Kristie Bull / Associated Press William H. Gates III       Charlie Riedel /...

During the year and a half I have spent as a student at Harvard, I’ve been befuddled by tRNA in a Life Sciences 1a lecture, experienced...

He was a world-beater before he arrived at Harvard. In 2003, as a new high-school graduate, Greg Cohen ’07 played on the U.S. under-19...

At a press conference, new Boston Red Sox starting pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka is flanked by translator Masafumi Hoshino ’02 (left) and...

She is not just another female Chinese-American Olympic hockey star. Julie Chu ’06 (’07), a two-time Olympic medalist in ice hockey...

Montage

Ballerina Heather Watts coached these Harvard Dance Center students in this performance of George Balanchine’s Serenade.

Photograph by Courtney Bryant

Heather Watts says that she prepared for teaching her Harvard course, “George Balanchine: Ballet Master,” the same way she used to...

A Natural History of North American Trees, by Donald Culross Peattie ’22, illustrated by Paul Landacre (Houghton Mifflin, $40). This is a...

“You never see cartoons where there are bad outcomes,” says Michelle Crames, M.B.A. ’03, founder and CEO of Lean Forward Media...

Both these elegant little books on science and religion are by eminent Harvard professors emeriti—much-revered researchers, writers, and...

New genetic knowledge may let us manipulate our nature: beef up our muscles, brush up our memory, make designer children. What’s wrong...

From their freshman year in college they were inseparable pals, once called “the Mutt and Jeff of post-Kantian idealism.” That...

Start with a stance that points the heel of one foot toward the middle of the other. Stand up tall, your back slightly arched. Stride forward...

~Who proclaimed that photography is to painting as water is to wine? ~Who protested, “They have taken away all our liberties—now...

Alumni

Hugo Morales against the gritty backdrop of Fresno, California

Photograph by Matt Black

With his flowing white hair and Mixtec Indian physique, Hugo Morales ’72, J.D. ’75, spoke recently to a crowd, mostly prominent...

Sage Stossel ’93, executive editor of The Atlantic Online, regularly contributes editorial illustrations to the Boston Globe. She prepared...

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

University faculty appear around the country to lecture on their specialties and meet with alumni. Here is a list of some of the speakers...

The University’s on-line learning programs (accessible via athome.harvard.edu) provide a wide range of material on courses, events...

Every Wednesday at seven in the morning, Leland Cole ’57 and 10 other Cincinnati business leaders get together for breakfast. The meetings...

Ever since Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, Carl Lindahl ’70, a research professor of English at the University of Houston, has...

Daniel Gensler ’72, one of the students gathered below on the steps of University Hall in this April 1969 photograph, invites classmates...

The “camp bug” bit Kevin Gordon ’91 in college, when the psychology concentrator took a summer job as a tennis pro at a...

Daniel Rockmore, Ph.D. ’89, is as likely to be found studying a Renaissance painting as writing equations on a blackboard. His unusual...

The College Pump

"Your wooden arm you hold outstretched to shake with passers-by." Baseball fan Philip J. Lowry ’71, M.B.A. ’79, of...

Treasure

“Chinese emperors were expected to be cultured gentlemen, whether they were or not,” says Robert D. Mowry, Dworsky curator of...