Year: 2008

  • Nation & World

    HUHS continues to offer flu vaccination clinics

    Harvard University Health Services (HUHS) is conducting free vaccination clinics. The clinics are open to the entire Harvard University community every Monday and Tuesday (noon-3 p.m.) at HUHS on the second floor of the Holyoke Center (Monks Library). Students must have their Harvard ID to receive the vaccination. More information on the flu can be…

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Rolf Mowatt-Larssen named senior fellow at Belfer Center

    Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, director of the Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence at the U.S. Department of Energy and former head of the Central Intelligence Agency’s WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) and terrorism efforts, will join the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs as a senior fellow on Jan. 19.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Harvard launches redesigned Web site

    Harvard University has a newer and shinier Web presence. The easily accessible and eminently navigable Web site has a clean, bold, handsome design.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Sports in brief

    With a 3-1 record, men’s basketball is off to its best start in three years — tallying wins over New Hampshire, Holy Cross, and Army — in large part because of the play of junior guard Jeremy Lin (averaging 20 points, 5.5 rebounds, and four steals per game) and freshman forward Keith Wright (averaging 12.3…

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Renewing a venerable experiment

    Even as we absorb the implications of the global financial crisis and plan for how we might react to it, our commitment to provide our undergraduates with an unparalleled academic experience remains as strong as ever. Progress continues with our new Program in General Education and with planning for our ambitious House renewal effort. It…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Phillips Brooks House: A tradition of reaching out to the community

    This is the fourth in a series of Gazette articles highlighting some of the many initiatives and charities that Harvard affiliates can support through this month’s Community Gifts Through Harvard campaign. The Community Gifts campaign allows affiliates to donate to a charity of their choice through cash, check, or payroll deduction.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Caroline Kennedy honors public service award winners

    Two young leaders, whose work on the front lines of public service has won national acclaim, were honored on Nov. 14 at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS).

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    FAS plan will slash greenhouse gas emissions

    Without action to slow the release of greenhouse gases, Harvard biologist and oceanographer James McCarthy said last week, current projections indicate that Massachusetts in 2080 could resemble South Carolina in 2008: The Bay State would experience an average of 24 days over 100 degrees each summer and two solid months of temperatures above 90.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Education Portal is a gateway to learning

    Education, excitement about learning, and a sense of curiosity were the themes of the day as Harvard undergraduates and the Allston children they mentor joined Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, Harvard President Drew Faust, and dozens of Allston families to celebrate the Harvard Allston Education Portal on Nov. 21.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Scientists explore nature’s designs

    As a graduate student, Harvard physical chemist Joanna Aizenberg acquired a passionate curiosity about — of all things — sponges. She particularly liked the ones made of glass, whose apparent fragility belied the fact that they could withstand terrific pressure in the deep sea.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Students looking to light African night

    Some current and former Harvard students have joined forces in an effort to apply new technology to an old problem: how to light Africa’s rural areas far from modern power supplies.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Early success highlights need for more progress

    Many of the 500,000 African babies born infected with HIV each year won’t live past age 2, a fact made even more appalling by the fact that doctors know how to halt mother-to-child HIV transmission.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Cutler finds decline in cancer deaths

    Improvements in behavior and screening have contributed greatly to the 13 percent decline in cancer mortality since 1990, with better cancer treatments playing a supporting role, according to new research from David Cutler of Harvard University.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Rosalind Chait Barnett receives HGSE’s Anne Roe Award

    Rosalind Chait Barnett, director of the Community, Families & Work Program at Brandeis University, received the 2008 Anne Roe Award from the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) on Nov. 17. The biennial award was established in 1979 to honor Anne Roe, the first woman tenured at Harvard in, 1963, and also a leading researcher…

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Revising Japan’s constitution: History, headlines, and prospects

    For months now, the pirates operating off the coast of Somalia have been making trouble for the world’s maritime shipping network. Now it appears their grappling hooks may have gotten entangled in another, very different web: the complicated question of revision of the Japanese constitution, specifically of Article 9, which contains the “renunciation of war”…

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Davis, Dupree help Carr Center fight human trafficking

    Through their generous support, the Carr Center’s Initiative to Stop Human Trafficking at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) will fund student research projects on human trafficking issues through the Sunny Dupree Policy Analysis Exercise (PAE) award.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    At GSD, UPenn’s Thomas Sugrue talks about ‘civil rights and the metropolis’

    For the first time in a generation, urban policy is back on the national agenda. Advocates for the nation’s cities have been thrilled by the announcement that the Obama administration will include a White House Office of Urban Policy.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Nigerian lawyer is a champion of women

    In 2002, a young Nigerian woman by the name of Amina Lawal — pregnant and unmarried — was tried for adultery under Shariah, Islam’s traditional law. She was sentenced to be stoned to death, a fate that briefly riveted the attention of media worldwide.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Seminar focuses on human rights

    The undergraduates who gather around the seminar table at 61 Kirkland St. have a lot on their minds. Not just final papers, athletic matches, and music performances, but a range of issues that run far beyond the daily stresses of college: Refugee resettlement. Human trafficking. Child soldiers. These human rights issues — along with many…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Images of terror through the eyes of children

    Basma was 8 when Janjaweed fighters on horseback swept into her village in the Darfur region of Sudan. Above them, helicopter gunships joined in the attack.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Woolsey: New technologies will make need for oil obsolete

    Salt was once highly valued as a preservative for meat, but eventually a new technology — refrigeration — greatly reduced its value. Today, rather than a contentious commodity, salt is a humdrum condiment.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Four students win Marshall Scholarships

    Four Harvard undergraduates have received the prestigious Marshall Scholarships, academic grants that will allow them to study abroad for two years. Sponsored by the British government, the scholarships offer exceptional students from the United States the opportunity for graduate-level study at any university in the United Kingdom in a field of their choosing. In addition…

    7 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Three from Harvard receive American Rhodes Scholarships

    Two Harvard College students and a Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) doctoral student have received Rhodes Scholarships. Thirty-two Americans were chosen from among 800 applicants for the scholarships to the University of Oxford in England.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    U.S. energy answers there for the taking, says Amory Lovins

    As U.S. automakers plead for a government bailout, the next great automotive revolution is already under way, as Japanese automakers plan for a generation of lightweight cars that vastly increase…

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Strong evidence brown dwarfs form like stars

    Astronomers have uncovered strong evidence that brown dwarfs form like stars. Using the Smithsonian’s Submillimeter Array (SMA), they detected molecules of carbon monoxide shooting outward from the object known as…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Doctor of Laws

    In one of the his last public speeches before succumbing to brain cancer in August 2009, Senator Ted Kennedy accepted an honorary Doctor or Laws degree from Harvard. President Drew Faust conferred the degree before a standing-room-only audience at Sanders Theatre on December 12, 2008.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Faust presents Kennedy with honorary degree

    President Drew G. Faust recalls decades of accomplishments in the life of Senator Edward M. Kennedy. In one of his final public appearances before his death in August 2009, Faust confers upon Kennedy the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Remarks of Stephen Breyer

    Stephen Breyer’s remarks at Harvard University’s Convocation, where Sen. Edward M. Kennedy received an honorary degree.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Remarks of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy

    Remarks by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy at Harvard University’s 2008 Convocation.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Harvard awards Sen. Kennedy honorary degree

    Political dignitaries, family members, current and former colleagues, faculty, students, old friends, and admirers were all part of the capacity crowd that filled Harvard’s Sanders Theatre Dec. 1 to honor the life of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

    6 minutes