Your independent source for Harvard news since 1898
-
Articles
-
News
more News
Claudine Gay, social science dean and Cowett professor of government and of African and African American studies
Photograph by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Public Affairs and Communications
The initative includes interdisciplinary conversation, annual symposia, and a postdoc program.
Nadya Okamoto
Courtesy of Nadya Okamoto for Cambridge City Council
Nadya Okamoto ’20 is juggling wider aspirations and school work.
Photograph by iStock/hayatikayhan
Growth in Harvard healthcare costs moderates.
-
Research
more Research
Image by Jezperklauzen/iStock
Oral bacteria can lodge in the gut and trigger inflammatory bowel conditions.
Illustration by Taylor Callery
Machine learning may raise the potential for predicting where—and when—an earthquake might strike.
Pakistanis eating rice, a staple crop and major source of protein in South Asia.
Photograph by A Majeed/AFP/Getty Images
How global warming can change crop nutrition
-
Students
more Students
Nadya Okamoto
Courtesy of Nadya Okamoto for Cambridge City Council
Nadya Okamoto ’20 is juggling wider aspirations and school work.
The Winthrop House library
Photograph by Peter Vanderwarker
Undergraduates return to newly improved digs.
Rachel L. Gable
Photograph by Harvard Magazine/JCHow some colleges help first-generation and low-income students succeed
-
Alumni
more Alumni
Fellow classics concentrators Sam Beck ’16 (left) and E.E. Cummings ’15
What one undergraduate learned
Stephanie Burt, recently named co-editor of poetry at The Nation, in her office at Harvard
Photograph by Stu Rosner
Stephanie Burt ’94 is the kind of poetry critic who provokes anger in other poetry critics.
Among the nineteenth-century frauds Kevin Young explores are the pseudo-scientific Great Moon Hoax.
Photograph from Chronicle/AlamyFrom the Missouri Compromise to the 2016 election, Kevin Young's Bunk takes stock of American hoaxes, con men, and race fantasies.
-
Harvard Squared
more Harvard Squared
Cooking lessons at the French Cultural Center
Photograph courtesy of the French Cultural Center
Greater Boston’s cultural centers offer a lot more than language classes.
Image courtesy of the Houghton Library
Harvard’s Houghton Library explores “Altered States: Sex, Drugs, and Transcendence.”
Photograph courtesy of Moldova
A Moldovan restaurant in Newton reflects rich culinary traditions.
-
Opinion
more Opinion
Readers comment on criminal injustices, alumni who died in Vietnam, political correctness, and more.
Drew Faust
President Drew Faust describes Harvard’s efforts to evaluate how well—and what exactly—its students learn.
-
Arts
more Arts
Photograph courtesy of the Boston International Book Fair
Rare books and ephemera at the Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair
Cooking lessons at the French Cultural Center
Photograph courtesy of the French Cultural Center
Greater Boston’s cultural centers offer a lot more than language classes.
-
Sports
more Sports
Freshman Harvard quarterback Jake Smith showed some moves as he slalomed through Princeton defenders on a 26-yard run.
Photograph by Tim O'Meara/The Harvard CrimsonA shellacking in the Stadium
Harvard's Charlie Booker deployed a mighty stiff arm to fend off Lafayette's Philip Parham. The Crimson junior rampaged his way to a career-high 159 yards on the ground.
Photograph by Tim O'Meara/The Harvard CrimsonThe Crimson gets back on track.
On one of his 11 tackles, Harvard senior defensive back Tim Haehl wrapped up Cornell's James Hubbard after a seven-yard gain.
Photograph by Patrick F. Shanahan
Cornell inexorably outmuscles Harvard.
-
Harvardiana
more Harvardiana
Fellow classics concentrators Sam Beck ’16 (left) and E.E. Cummings ’15
What one undergraduate learned
Illustration by Mark Steele
“Vagabonding,” Harvard Student Agencies, and more from the Harvard Alumni Bulletin and Harvard Magazine
Massachusetts Hall
Photograph by Muns/Wikipedia
Twenty submissions have been selected as semifinalists to replace the final line in Harvard’s alma mater.
- Puzzles
-
News
-
Current Issue
Read the current issue
November-December 2017
Illustration by Robert Neubecker
How market forces have made American higher education radically unequal
-
Archives
From the archives
April 2007: Drew Gilpin Faust at her then-office as dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
Photograph by Jim Harrison
A Scholar in the House
Tradition and the twenty-first century were tangled together in Barker Center’s Thompson Room on the afternoon of February 11, when Drew...
-
Class Notes
To access Class Notes or Obituaries, please log in using your Harvard Magazine account and verify your alumni status.
Don't have a Harvard Magazine account? Register Here
Or submit a class note or obituary
- Classifieds
-
Donate
Show your Support for
Harvard MagazineYour donation today ensures that Harvard Magazine can continue to provide high-quality content and remain an editorially independent source of news about the Harvard community.
January-February 2008
Letters
I sympathize with the shocked Athenians and disgusted Germans who visited the exhibit of ancient sculptures that had recently been colored, as...
The College Pump
"Your wooden arm you hold outstretched to shake with passers-by." Three worthy books full of Harvard references have arrived...
Treasure
The stock market plummets. Credit is tight. Bankers quake. Then J.P. Morgan organizes a consortium of financial saviors to provide cash to banks...
In this Issue
Photomontage by Stuart Bradford
When Alison finally heard her son Matthew’s diagnosis, she had already spent a night on the Web, terrifying herself, as she puts it...
This posthumous portrait of Whitman by her friend Helen Merriman hangs in the Radcliffe College Room of the Schlesinger Library. The leaves in Whitman's bodice may be laurel, symbols of victory and of artistic achievement.
Courtesy of Imaging Department, Harvard University Art Museums, © President and Fellows of Harvard College
Sarah Wyman Whitman was an original and compelling figure in late nineteenth century Boston. Very much a public personality, she was a painter...
Illustration by Annie Bissett
When Dan Kindlon watches the Tigers play softball, he sees the legacy of feminism for girls. “My daughter’s concentrating on...
Soldiers' graves near General Hospital, City Point, Virginia, circa 1861-1869. Photographer unknown
Courtesy of the Library of Congress
The Civil War transformed American society and institutions. It brought about the formal end of slavery (but not of racial discrimination). It...
Letters
I sympathize with the shocked Athenians and disgusted Germans who visited the exhibit of ancient sculptures that had recently been colored, as...
Right Now
Illustration by Robert Neubecker
Are some experiences so horrific that the human brain seals them away, only to recall them years later? The concept of “repressed...
Photograph courtesy of Robert Wood
Small, winged insects have a reputation for accidentally buzzing into closed windows or swooping into your eye during a bike ride. But the...
Prehistoric quids—wads of masticated leaves found in dry rock shelters—are yielding DNA clues to the origins of framing in the American Southwest.
Photograph by Steven Leblanc
A question mark has long hovered over human transitions from hunting and gathering to farming: did agriculture spread by communication—in...
Photograph by Shepard Sherbell/Corbis Saba
Until the mid 1980s, victims of domestic abuse who called the police could expect the officers to do little more than tell the abusive spouse to...
After the announcement that Tom Cruise would not play the male lead in Cold Mountain, the movie’s value on the Hollywood Stock Exchange dropped by $21.50, indicating a drop of $21.5 million in traders’ expectations for the movie’s ticket sales. The price rebounded on news that Jude Law and Nicole Kidman (pictured) would star in the film.
Courtesy of Miramax Films/Zuma/Corbis
For Anita Elberse, whose latest research investigates the impact of big-name stars on films’ revenues, pop culture and rigorous analysis...
New England Regional
Tom Towers at a gathering for Staying Put in New Canaan
Photograph by Stu Rosner
As board president of Staying Put in New Canaan, Tom Towers, M.B.A. ’64, believes in self-reliance. The Connecticut organization, modeled...
Enjoy nature this winter: take a brisk walk in the Arnold Arboretum, view the stars from the Harvard College Observatory, or learn about the...
During the last five years, MIT’s former director of planning, Robert Simha, MIT president emeritus Paul Gray, and a core group of other...
The Beehive's boiler-room-with-a-touch-of-Paris bar
Courtesy of the Beehive
If you’re 30-plus and want a fun night out with live music and a splash of funk, where do you go? The clubs and bars lining Lansdowne and...
John Harvard's Journal
Harvard president Drew Faust made the inaugural performance at the New College Theatre, on November 1, the setting for her announcement of a...
Hasty Pudding Theatricals (HPT) returns to its historic home this year for its 160th production. (Since the inaugural show in 1844, the group...
For a while, all seemed to go well at the ribbon-cutting ceremonies for the New College Theatre on October 17. As a jazz trio played in the...
Politically, U.S. professors are less liberal than many people believe, but their ranks also include fewer conservatives than in the early...
Photograph by Jim Harrison Bruce Western His interest in prisons began “almost by accident,” says the new director of the Kennedy...
When physicist Eric Mazur’s research group created a new material called black silicon one day in 1998, he knew right away they were on to...
The University’s Office of News and Public Affairs has debuted HarvardScience (http://harvardscience.harvard.edu), a website on...
Illustration by Mark Steele
1913 The Alumni Bulletin welcomes the founding of the Harvard University Press as an “eminently appropriate [way to] powerfully...
A year ago, Harvard filed three sets of plans for building in Allston with the City of Boston: a master plan for the new Allston campus, plans...
How will Americans know that their Supreme Court is truly dedicated to interpreting the Constitution as the Founding Fathers would wish?...
The museum of modern and contemporary art that Harvard plans to build in Allston will have to wait. In September, the Harvard Corporation...
Five alumni—two of them former faculty members—and the recipient of an honorary doctorate were among those to whom Nobel Prizes were...
Photograph by Justin Ide/Harvard News Office Jorge I. Domínguez Harvard’s engagement with the world widened significantly during...
Public Health Dean Steps Down Photograph by Kris Snibbe/ Harvard News Office Barry R. Bloom Barry R. Bloom, dean of the Harvard School of...
Mollie wright ’09 expected to spend her summer in Costa Rica teaching English. She was, after all, a volunteer for WorldTeach, a...
On a hot September day in 2004, President Lawrence H. Summers was addressing the large group of newly arrived freshmen and their parents about...
Rebounding from a rocky start, the football team defeated its first six Ivy League opponents and scripted a stunning finale by routing a...
In the fall, the Tokyo publisher Asahi Shinsho released a new title in Japanese, loosely translated as The Unknown Story of Matsuzaka’s...
In the north country of New Hampshire, skiers from Dartmouth, the current NCAA champions, reign supreme, while the Green Mountains are home to...
Montage
Pink Martini onstage, with Thomas Lauderdale on piano at far left, and vocalist China Forbes.
Photograph by James Wilder Hancock/Pink Martini
At the end of Pink Martini’s Carnegie Hall debut this past June, a conga line broke out in the audience and bounced its way up and down...
The Complete Fables of Jean de La Fontaine, translated by Norman R. Shapiro ’51, Ph.D. ’58 (University of Illinois, $80 cloth, $25...
Lisa Nestles into the folds of Adam’s grey fleece jacket, her hand entwined in his. The two lovers share a park bench and an uncertain...
With its muted hues and pine floorboards, the store resembles a medieval library with a blinking Apple iMac on the counter. Inventory at James...
Improbable as it may seem, James D. Watson—the co-discoverer (with Francis Crick) of the structure of DNA—has written a Book of...
Porter University Professor Helen Vendler grew up with her mother’s poetry books, which “stopped with the Victorians.” It was...
Marcia Chellis requests a source for “Everything is high school.” Barbara Murray would like to verify an anecdote involving...
Alumni
Sarah Chayes in a war-ravaged village near Kandahar
Photograph by Eve Lyman
The sound of a bomb detonating breaks the stillness of Kandahar’s morning hours. To Sarah Chayes ’84, in her office in the small...
Physician-photographer Judith Peterson evokes “adoption.”
Photograph © Judith R. Peterson
Images are integral to the way human beings understand the world around them. As a physician and a photographer, Judith R. Peterson ’82...
En route to the math placement exam, Annette Ghee ’83 met classmate Burt Hamner. Each one thought the other cute… and they were...
Eye on Harvard is an Internet talk show “for and about Harvard people” that appears on InTimeTV.com. The subject matter is...
University clubs offer a variety of social and intellectual events, including Harvard-affiliated speakers (please see the partial list below)...
University president Drew Faust stopped in Chicago on November 9 for a black-tie dinner to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the city’s...
The College Pump
"Your wooden arm you hold outstretched to shake with passers-by." Three worthy books full of Harvard references have arrived...
Treasure
The stock market plummets. Credit is tight. Bankers quake. Then J.P. Morgan organizes a consortium of financial saviors to provide cash to banks...