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Photograph by Rose Lincoln/Harvard Public Affairs and Communications
With greetings to the community, and a major faculty appointment, new Harvard president Lawrence S. Bacow sets to work.
New filings in a lawsuit against Harvard over admissions allege discrimination against Asian-Americans.
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Research
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Illustration by Jim Frazier
Could place-based policies solve regional economic and social problems?
Illustration by Martin Hargreaves
In the antebellum South, slavery was paired with modern business practices.
Durba Mitra
Photograph courtesy of Durba Mitra
Harvard’s first professor appointed solely in gender studies
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Students
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“Connections” and “Transformations” are both organized around frequent critique sessions,…
Image courtesy of Megan Panzano
Design courses enlarge the College curriculum.
At Harvard African Students Association’s Africa Night (from left): Tom Osborn ’20 of Kenya; Joshua Benjamin ’21, of Phoenix, Arizona (whose ancestors are Angolan but were first brought to Charleston, South Carolina, in the late seventeenth century); Tawanda Mulalu ’20 of Botswana; and Mfundo Radebe ’20 of South Africa
Photograph by Christabel Narh
The Undergraduate looks at Harvard through an African filter.
Isa Flores-Jones and Catherine Zhang
Photographs courtesy of the subjects
The Ledecky Fellows provide an undergraduate perspective on life at Harvard.
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Alumni
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Sandler relishes having her office within MoMA.
Photograph courtesy of Alexis Sandler
Solving legal challenges at MoMA
Recollections and Reflections from the Harvard class of 1957—a benchmark reunion project
Margaret M. Wang
Photograph by Jim Harrison
New HAA president Margaret Wang ’09
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Harvard Squared
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Diners, bar-loungers, and chefs share one big room at Comedor.
Photograph courtesy of Comedor
An intimate place for Chilean-American food in Newton
Autumnal mist over Spot Pond
Photograph by Mike Ryan
Just north of Boston, a wild park is filled with forests, lakes, and rocky hills.
Nighttime in the North End
Photograph by Dennis Tangney Jr./Getty Images
“Stories the Chamber of Commerce doesn’t want you to hear”
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Opinion
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At Harvard African Students Association’s Africa Night (from left): Tom Osborn ’20 of Kenya; Joshua Benjamin ’21, of Phoenix, Arizona (whose ancestors are Angolan but were first brought to Charleston, South Carolina, in the late seventeenth century); Tawanda Mulalu ’20 of Botswana; and Mfundo Radebe ’20 of South Africa
Photograph by Christabel Narh
The Undergraduate looks at Harvard through an African filter.
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Arts
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Sandler relishes having her office within MoMA.
Photograph courtesy of Alexis Sandler
Solving legal challenges at MoMA
Nell Painter, a professor emerita of American history at Princeton, now works as an artist in Newark, New Jersey.
Photograph by John Emerson
Nell Painter reflects on leaving the ivory tower for art school at age 64.
Sharmila Sen
Photograph courtesy of Sharmila Sen
A “first-gen” American explores race and assimilation in the United States.
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Sports
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(Click arrow to see full image) The Game, 1911, ending in a less glamorous tie score than in the 1968 version
Photograph courtesy of the Library of Congress
Boosting the game, and The Game
Arguably the Ivy League’s most dangerous offensive weapon, the Crimson’s return man and wideout Justice Shelton-Mosley ‘19 is a threat to score every time he touches the ball.
Photograph by Gil Talbot/Courtesy of Harvard Athletic Communications
Justice Shelton-Mosley needs only the tiniest bit of space to go the distance.
Harvard Athletics overhauls coaches’ compensation.
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Harvardiana
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Students at the Graduate School of Design created the lion’s share of posters used by student activists in 1969.
Poster courtesy of the Harvard University Archives
An exhibit on Harvard in 1969 opens at Pusey Library this fall.
Illustration by Taylor Callery
The “Tenth Justice” and the polarization of the Supreme Court
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September-October 2018
Davis relaxing in 1910 at Devil’s Thumb, on the Continental Divide near Corona, Colorado
Photograph courtesy of the Houghton Library
Brief life of a pioneering geomorphologist: 1850-1934
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American activists unfurl a banner in front of the Supreme Court.
James M. Thresher/Washington Post/Getty ImagesCapital Punishment’s Persistence
An historian tracks the death penalty’s persistence in America.
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September-October 2016
Letters
Readers comment on Harvard and slavery, scientists and sex, final clubs, Seamus Heaney, and more
President Faust on Harvard Divinity School's bicentennial
How Harvard might better explain itself to faculty, friends, and the world at large
A distinctive Harvard Magazine voice remembered
Welcoming an accomplished new editorial colleague
The College Pump
Robert M. Pennoyer, age 19, on duty in 1944
Photograph courtesy of Robert M. Pennoyer
A member of the class of 1946 on the horrors, and humor, of World War II.
Treasure
Common thistle (Cirsium vulgare) found in an open pasture in Hillsborough, New Hampshire, in 1921
Image courtesy of the Harvard University Herbaria
Digitized herbaria collections data allow researchers to predict future plant ranges.
In this Issue
Illustration by Andrew MacGregor
Colson Whitehead ’91 plays for higher stakes in his new novel.
Illustration by Adam Niklewicz
Making the case for charter schools and other choice options to boost educational performance
George Bucknam Dorr on the Beachcroft Path on Huguenot Head
Photograph courtesy of Friends of Acadia and the National Park Service and NPS/Archive
Brief life of a persistent conservationist: 1853-1944
As Jerry Mitrovica demonstrates, the weight of ice sheets in polar regions can actually flatten the earth’s rocky mantle, altering the speed of the planet’s rotation and changing sea levels.
Photograph by Jim Harrison
Connecting climate change to the planet’s shifting crust
Nancy Rosenblum in her Greenwich Village apartment building
Portrait by Robert Adam Mayer
Nancy Rosenblum studies neighbors and the power of proximity.
Letters
Readers comment on Harvard and slavery, scientists and sex, final clubs, Seamus Heaney, and more
President Faust on Harvard Divinity School's bicentennial
How Harvard might better explain itself to faculty, friends, and the world at large
A distinctive Harvard Magazine voice remembered
Welcoming an accomplished new editorial colleague
Right Now
Illustration by Wesley Bedrosian
Evolution shaped humans to rest—and to run only when absolutely necessary.
A 3-D printer “draws” a coiled antenna in the air. What allows the printer to work this way is a laser that hardens an “ink” of silver nanoparticles as they emerge from the nozzle.
Image courtesy of Mark Skylar-Scott
A new kind of 3-D printer forms wires in midair.
Anthony Jack is interested in diversity among low-income students.
Photograph by Jim Harrison
Sociologist Anthony Jack studies two types of low-income students.
Harvard Squared
The Saugus Iron Works sits on a tidal basin about a 10-minute drive off Interstate 95.
Photograph courtesy of the National Park Service
The Saugus Iron Works highlights early U.S. industrial history
Workers flood the cranberry bog, then collect and bag the berries that float to the top.
Photograph by Andrew W. Griffith/A.D. Maekpeace Company
Learn how New England’s iconic berries are cultivated at this annual event.
Harold Edgerton captured the interface between art and science, as in his photograph of a bullet passing through an apple.
Image courtesy of the Bruce Museum
The Bruce Museum highlights “Science in Motion” in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Figureheads, like this 1970s reproduction, often adorned fire stations in the 1800s.
Photograph by Harvard Magazine/JC
Children and adults alike are drawn to this eclectic array of firefighting artifacts.
Sevan’s Murat and Nuran Chavushian hold up a batch of feta.
Photograph by Stu Rosner
Ethnic markets serve up a world of food.
John Harvard's Journal
Assembling the Harvard Life Lab, on Western Avenue, at the edge of the Business School campus
Photograph by Jim Harrison
Harvard's sweeping building boom.
Michael Brenner
Photograph by Stu Rosner
Applied mathematician Michael Brenner on not knowing anything
An existing frame home begins its transformation into the new Winthrop House faculty dean’s residence.
Photograph by Jim Harrison
Three projects in, some physical and financial assessments
Illustration by Mark Steele
From the pages of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin and Harvard Magazine
Douglas Elmendorf
Photograph by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Public Affairs and Communications
New HKS dean Douglas Elmendorf talks progressive policy and economics.
“P” with Mary surrounded by 12 stars, from Richard de Saint-Laurent, De laudibus beatae Mariae virginis, late 1200s
Courtesy of Wellesley College
Little-known treasures from Houghton Library and other collections
Advocate editors playing to the camera circa 1900-1910
Courtesy of Harvard University Archives
The Harvard Advocate turns 150.
Chao Center
Photograph by Jim Harrison
Chao Center, a Law School alumnus as vice-presidential nominee, sexual-assault lexicon, Gen Ed transition, and more
Photograph by Harvard Magazine/JB
Continuing challenges to undergraduate-admissions policies, and diversifying faculties
The magazine’s Berta Greenwald Ledecky Undergraduate Fellows for the 2016-2017 academic year will be Matthew Browne ’17 and Lily Scherlis ’18.
Photograph by Stu Rosner
The magazine's Ledecky Fellows provide an undergraduate perspective.
Anne Cheng
Photograph by Jim Harrison
Anne Cheng anchors Harvard's new golf prowess.
Montage
Could Science Prove There’s a God? (2014) is part of artist Judith Brodsky's ongoing series about science and philosophy, The Twenty Most Important Scientific Questions of the 21st Century.
Image courtesy of Judith Brodsky
From the beginning, artist and advocate Judith Brodsky felt “pulls in different directions.”
Composer Nicholas Britell has written scores for films including Moonlight, A Tale of Love and Darkness, and The Seventh Fire. He is also a pianist and producer (most recently of Whiplash, by Damien Chazelle ’07).
Courtesy of Nicholas Britell
A film composer's career, from annotating Sneakers to doing “archaeology” for 12 Years a Slave
Autumn harvest: a honeybee on Solidago gigantea (goldenrod)
Photograph by Helga R. Heilmann
Thomas D. Seeley on the craft and science of bee hunting
Melanerpes lewis, Meriwether Lewis’s woodpecker, in the MCZ’s collections
Photograph by Mark Sloan/Courtesy of the Museum of Comparative Zoology/Harvard University
Recent books with Harvard connections
Joseph Finder at the Boston Athenaeum, a membership library. The private investigator hero of his Nick Heller series is also based in the city, where Finder lives with his family.
Photograph by Stu Rosner
Joseph Finder makes technology the texture of his new thriller, Guilty Minds.
Illustration by James Steinberg
A focused briefing on degree-attainment, democracy, and economic opportunity
Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words
Alumni
Posing with a tool of the trade, Alcorn can revel in her job’s reflection of film noir.
Photograph by Jim Harrison
Boston-based private investigator Sarah Alcorn is “a bit of an oddball in this business.”
Martin J. Grasso Jr.
Photograph by Jim Harrison
President Martin J. Grasso boosts alumni volunteerism.
The Harvard Club of Boston’s renovated Harvard Hall foyer
Photograph by Richard Mandelkorn/The Harvard Club of Boston
The Harvard Club of Boston’s makeover, and new president
(From left) Annalee Perez ’17 and Brittany Wang ’17
Courtesy of the Harvard Alumni Association
The Aloian Memorial Scholars contribute to House life.
Harvard Alumni Association awards honor volunteer service to the University.
Paul Zeitz visiting with Proof School students last fall
A private San Francisco middle school and high school nurture a passion for numbers.
The College Pump
Robert M. Pennoyer, age 19, on duty in 1944
Photograph courtesy of Robert M. Pennoyer
A member of the class of 1946 on the horrors, and humor, of World War II.
Treasure
Common thistle (Cirsium vulgare) found in an open pasture in Hillsborough, New Hampshire, in 1921
Image courtesy of the Harvard University Herbaria
Digitized herbaria collections data allow researchers to predict future plant ranges.