Your independent source for Harvard news since 1898

Your independent source for Harvard news since 1898

January-February 2017

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Letters

Readers comment on training teachers, global health, climate change, and more

President Faust on Harvard athletes’ international outreach

Tuition income—and what the College can and ought to charge

Celebrating distinguished authors and artists

The College Pump

Photographs by Harvard Magazine/Lydia Carmichael

Amusing campus signage, vanished greenery, and gunplay of yore

Treasure

<p class="caption"> A poster invites citizens to protect protesters from attacks at Maidan Nezalezhnosti, or Independence Square, in Kiev during the 2013-2014 Euromaidan protests.</p>
<p class="credit">Image courtesy of the Ukrainian Research Institute Reference Library</p>

One of the largest Ukrainian-language collections in the world, housed at Harvard

In this Issue

<p class="caption">A serpentine proximal tubule (light pink) snakes through the center of a multi-layer network of blood vessels (hot pink), all created using a 3-D printer.</p>
<p class="credit">Image from Scientific Reports</p>

3-D-printing pioneer Jennifer Lewis aims to fabricate replacement organs.

SKALA SIKAMINEAS, LESBOS, GREECE

Refugees from Syria rest on the coast of the Greek island of Lesbos. Thousands of refugees cross the Aegean Sea from Turkey in rubber boats every day, fleeing conflicts in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

A Syrian refugee who came to Lesbos that week by one of many boats told me his new life had just started. “New life as a human being,” he added. 

     I hope he will not question this emotional sentence on the long way to a new home even though there are signs from the first seconds of their arrival that the refugees didn’t land in a paradise. 

     Every boat that comes to the island is greeted by two groups. There are dedicated volunteers who work in shifts during day and night to help refugees in their first hours in Europe—and then there are also groups of   “engine hunters,” as they are called here. Very often they come first. They only care for the boat. The engines are removed before the last person is taken care of. Business is business.

     It was a long week full of almost surreal scenes…

Photograph by Maciek Nabrdalik

A Nieman Fellow documents the perilous passage of refugees fleeing war to seek safety in Europe.

Williamina Fleming
Portrait courtesy of Special Collections, Fine Arts Library/Harvard University

Brief life of a spectrographic pioneer: 1857-1911

<p class="caption">Deidre Lynch in her book-lined Barker Center office</p>
<p class="credit">Photograph by Stu Rosner</p>

Deidre Lynch on the cult of Jane Austen and the complexities of loving literature

Illustration by Davide Bonazzi

Assaults on privacy and security in America threaten democracy itself.

Letters

Readers comment on training teachers, global health, climate change, and more

President Faust on Harvard athletes’ international outreach

Tuition income—and what the College can and ought to charge

Celebrating distinguished authors and artists

Right Now

<p class="credit">Illustration by Ken Orvidas</p>

Harvard’s Crowd Innovation Lab studies what motivates crowds to solve problems.

Asim Khwaja’s experiments in taxation aim to buttress the legitimacy of government in developing nations.

Photograph by Jim Harrison

Paying Pakistani tax collectors for better performance to increase tax revenue

<p class="credit">Illustration by Taylor Callery</p>

David R. Liu has harnessed evolution to lab experiments.

Harvard Squared

The screening of Kent Garrett’s Black GI

Photograph by Jim Harrison

Hidden gem: the Harvard Film Archive

<p class="credit">Photograph by Stu Rosner</p>

Night Song soothes the soul at First Church in Cambridge.

Ice skating in the heart of downtown Providence

Photograph ©Wickedgood/dreamstime.com

Car-free fun in downtown Providence

The front hall holds a pint-sized proscenium arch made of glass mosaics

Photograph courtesy of Ayer Mansion

Preserving Boston’s unique Ayer Mansion

“Global tapas” and fresh seafood at Little Donkey

Photograph courtesy of Little Donkey

A sampling of Cambridge’s newest restaurants

John Harvard's Journal

<p class="credit">Photograph by Susan Young Photography</p>

Harvard's three-legged encouragement of entrepreneurship

The annual financial report celebrates current strengths, but cautions about a coming revenue squeeze.

The swift growth in undergraduate quantitative-science concentrators

<p class="credit">Photograph by Stu Rosner</p>

Harvard’s chief sustainability officer on scaling up green solutions while scaling back its environmental footprint

Illustration by Mark Steele

From the pages of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin and Harvard Magazine

<p class="caption">Picketing and strike signs appeared on campus for the first time this millennium as dining-hall workers sought a new contract.</p>
<p class="credit">Courtesy of UNITE HERE Local 26</p>

A strike, negotiations, and a vote on wages, benefits, and union recognition

<p class="caption">Last year, Fox Club undergraduates ad&shy;mitted female members; the graduate board ruled the memberships provisional.</p>
<p class="credit">Photograph by Harvard Magazine/JC</p>

The College struggles with single-gender final clubs—and sexist behavior by sports teams.

A 30 percent reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions is achieved; a 2050 goal appears more challenging.

<p class="credit">Photograph by Kris Snibbe/Harvard Public Affairs and Communications</p>

Nobel honorands, a new University Professor, the Honor Code, and more

<p class="caption">From left: Michael Balboni, Tyler J. VanderWeele, and Tracy A. Balboni</p>
<p class="credit">Photograph by Stu Rosner</p>

A Harvard initiative studies how spirituality affects patients’ experience at the end of life

Harvard’s congressional contingent gains five new members.

<p class="credit">Illustrations by Cindy Salans Rosenheim</p>

Moving off campus, and growing up

<p class="caption">Frustrated in regulation by Princeton defenders such as Luke Catarius, Harvard&rsquo;s quarterback Joe Viviano prevailed in overtime, diving for a one-yard touchdown that gave the Crimson a 23-20 victory.</p>
<p class="credit">Matthew Deshaw/The Harvard Crimson</p>

After living on the edge, the football team confronts a shocking season-ending upset.

Montage

Production photo from Madame White Snake

<p class="caption">The title character of <i>Madame White Snake</i> and her companion, in the opera's prologue</p>
<p class="credit">Photograph by James Daniel/Courtesy of Beth Morrison Projects</p>

In the “final phase” of her life, Cerise Lim Jacobs builds herself an oeuvre.

Photograph by iStock

Contentious American democracy—in a new case-method history book

Clint Smith
Photograph courtesy of Clint Smith

“It doesn’t even make sense to me that art and protest would be separate.”

<p class="caption">A scene from the Old Testament&rsquo;s Book of Esther, as depicted by Rembrandt c. 1660</p>
<p class="credit">Courtesy of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow</p>

Recent books with Harvard connections

<p class="caption">The Classical Theatre of Harlem premiered <i>Fit for a Queen,</i> Shamieh's most recent play, in October.
</p>
<p class="credit">Photograph by Leland Durond Thompson</p>

A playwright making those overlooked by history into lore

<p class="caption">A contemporary rendering of the Springfield arsenal attack during Shays&rsquo;s Rebellion&mdash;a shaping event for the Founders</p>
<p class="credit">Image from Bridgeman Images</p>

The anti-democratic origins of the Constitution

Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words

Alumni

Julio Ricardo Varela

Photograph by Robert Adam Mayer

Latino-American journalist Julio Ricardo Varela

Harvard’s first University-wide Women’s Weekend

The College Pump

Photographs by Harvard Magazine/Lydia Carmichael

Amusing campus signage, vanished greenery, and gunplay of yore

Treasure

<p class="caption"> A poster invites citizens to protect protesters from attacks at Maidan Nezalezhnosti, or Independence Square, in Kiev during the 2013-2014 Euromaidan protests.</p>
<p class="credit">Image courtesy of the Ukrainian Research Institute Reference Library</p>

One of the largest Ukrainian-language collections in the world, housed at Harvard