Year: 2008

  • Nation & World

    Radcliffe Institute appoints faculty leaders

    In the Harvard community and worldwide, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study is known for interdisciplinary ventures and for providing an ideal environment for incubating creative ideas and discoveries. To enhance its programs, the Radcliffe Institute has appointed several faculty leaders who will help spur new multidisciplinary collaborations in the arts, humanities, sciences, and social…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Gift spurs public service efforts

    At a late-afternoon reception in University Hall’s Faculty Room last week (Nov. 13), Harvard President Drew Faust and Harvard College Dean Evelynn Hammonds gratefully acknowledged a $1 million, multiyear gift from Charlotte Chen Ackert ’76 and David Ackert to the University’s Center for Public Interest Careers (CPIC).

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    HKS initiative includes new professorships, student support, and research

    The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University is announcing an ambitious new initiative linking innovative governance to the world’s major social challenges.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Faculty Council

    At its fourth meeting of the year on Nov. 12, the Faculty Council discussed committee service and considered a proposal for a new concentration in Human Developmental and Regenerative Biology. The council next meets on Nov. 26. The preliminary deadline for the Dec. 9 Faculty meeting is Nov. 24 at 9:30 a.m.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Probing an unlikely friendship

    Theirs was an unlikely friendship. One man was a black abolitionist, orator, and journalist who had been a slave from Maryland, the other a white politician from the backwoods of Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Falling in love with South Asian music

    As a young boy, Richard Wolf, professor of music, liked to sit at the piano in his grandparents’ home and invent short musical ditties. “My grandfather would listen and shout, ‘Oh! It’s Bach! Oh, just like Mozart!’” Wolf recalled recently, with a laugh. “He was wonderfully encouraging.”

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    This month in Harvard history

    November 1942 — A Harvard Alumni Association advertisement for the well-known Harvard chair (black with gold trim and mahogany-colored arms; weight: 28 pounds; advertised price: $13.50) yields the following historical details: “Many Harvard men know well this famous ‘Freshman’ chair which can be traced far back into the history of the college . . .…

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Police reports

    Following are some of the incidents reported to the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) for the week ending Nov. 10. The official log is located at 1033 Massachusetts Ave., sixth floor, and is available online at http://www.hupd.harvard.edu.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    In brief

    Money Mondays offer help The Office of Human Resources will be offering a special series of “HARVie chats” on banking, benefits, investing, and other financial topics. Harvard staff are invited to visit http://harvie.harvard.edu/chats/upcomingchats.shtml to get information that may help in navigating through the current economic downturn.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Newsmakers

    Klaber selected for summit J.D./M.B.A. student Andrew Klaber has been selected as one of 160 emerging leaders from 30 countries in the Asia-Pacific region who will gather at the Four Seasons Hotel in Tokyo for the Asia Society’s Third Annual Asia 21 Young Leaders Summit.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Gleason memorial set for Nov. 14

    A memorial service is set for Andrew Gleason, professor emeritus of the Mathematics Department, who died Oct. 17. The service will be Nov. 14 at 2 p.m. in the Memorial Church, Harvard Yard. A reception will follow at Loeb House, 17 Quincy St., from 3 to 5 p.m.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Harvard China Fund announces fiscal year 2010 grant program

    The Harvard China Fund, under the Office of the Provost, has announced its fiscal year 2010 grants program for Harvard faculty, programs, and Schools. The purpose of the fund is to support interdisciplinary research and teaching in and about China, focus Harvard’s considerable strengths toward tackling the challenges that China faces, and improve communication and…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Student prizes awarded in Japanese Studies

    The Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies and Kodansha Publishers recently hosted the 14th annual Edwin O. Reischauer/Kodansha Ltd. Commemorative Symposium and the 13th annual awarding of the Noma-Reischauer Prizes in Japanese Studies. These prizes are given annually by Kodansha Publishers for the best essays written by Harvard University students on Japan-related topics.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Crimson embarrass Columbia in blowout

    The rain held off over a cloudy Ohiri Field on Saturday (Nov. 8), but Columbia still felt the storm. The Crimson’s 6-1 rout of the Lions undoubtedly sent the message to the University of Pennsylvania Quakers that if they want this year’s title, Harvard will make them earn it when the two meet on Saturday…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Sweet taste of victory

    Nine seconds. Only nine seconds were left on the clock when Crimson defender Lizzy Nichols ’10 kicked the game-winning penalty shot to the back of the net in double overtime. The 109-minute-51-second thriller against Columbia on Saturday (Nov. 8) clinched the Ivy League title for Harvard, who started the day in a three-way-tie for first…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Harvard’s roots: From dirt to display case

    Just a year after being pulled from Harvard Yard’s soil, the bones, buttons, pottery shards, and type from the press that printed North America’s first Bible are cleaned up and on display in a new exhibit at Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Living in the green zone at ‘Rock Hall’

    “Rock Hall” — the nickname for John D. Rockefeller Jr. Hall at Harvard Divinity School (HDS) — looks just like what it is: a spare, elegant building in the Modernist tradition.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Fighting domestic violence: One way that Community Gifts helps others

    Diane Rosenfeld, through her work at Harvard, has found a way to help many. Social justice and civil rights protection of domestic violence victims are at the core of Rosenfeld’s work, both as a lecturer at Harvard Law School (HLS) and as an activist with Jane Doe Inc., the Massachusetts Coalition Against Sexual Assault and…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Eleanor and Miles Shore 50th Anniversary Fellowship Program for Scholars in Medicine

    The Eleanor and Miles Shore 50th Anniversary Fellowship Program for Scholars in Medicine has announced the selection of more than 90 junior faculty members, researchers, and clinicians as fellows for the 2008-09 academic year. Fellows generally receive between $25,000 and $30,000 for one year.

    8 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Drug trial shows dramatic reduction in hidden heart disease

    A Harvard-led study shows that the risk of heart attack and stroke among subjects with “silent heart disease” — and normal cholesterol levels — can be dramatically reduced by the use of an already widely prescribed class of drugs.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Shore Fellowship affords breathing room

    The weekend was hectic for physician Rhonda Bentley-Lewis: two full days of activities, including her son’s birthday party. Then came the trip to the emergency room, not to attend to a patient, but to Christian, the 11-year-old birthday boy, and his broken wrist.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Tanner lecturer, peacemaker Nusseibeh in search of the improbable

    Prior to delivering the first of this year’s Tanner Lectures, political activist Sari Nusseibeh gave the audience a laugh — and a cheat sheet. “My normal attitude in lectures is to doze off when someone is reading them,” he quipped, “so if you do doze off I just want to tell you that my message…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    HKS gives $10M boost to program

    The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University will allocate an additional $10 million to an innovative program that trains emerging leaders from developing nations with the help of funds from the Ford Foundation. The announcement was made at the 50th anniversary celebration of the Edward S. Mason Program, which was held at…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Post-election: What’s changed, what’s stayed the same

    Barack Obama will enter the White House in January with the strongest mandate of any Democratic president at least since Lyndon Johnson in 1965, and arguably since Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933. Signs of a generational alignment, like the ones that made “Roosevelt Democrat” or “Reagan Republicans” household words are apparent.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Redressing five centuries of injustice: A start

    On May 4, 1493 — less than a year after Columbus set foot in the New World — Pope Alexander VI issued “Inter Caetera,” a papal bull that still resonates more than five centuries later.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Sen. Edward Kennedy to receive honorary degree at December convocation

    Sen. Edward Kennedy will receive an honorary degree from Harvard on Dec. 1 in a special convocation at Sanders Theatre. The honor is in recognition of Kennedy’s lifelong commitment to public service and his tireless efforts as a champion for a range of social issues including health care, civil rights, labor, employment, the environment, and…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Rights champion Goldstone speaks

    In human rights terms, Richard J. Goldstone, the 70-year-old veteran of South Africa’s highest courts and a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, has walked the walk and talked the talk — chiefly by having a role in a number of this generation’s most important humanitarian events.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Student diggers take Harvard’s roots from dirt to display case

    Emily Pierce ’10 was up to her hips in Harvard Yard, standing in a square hole in the ground, carefully scraping soil as she sought bits of archaeological treasure: a…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Common surgical anesthetic induces Alzheimer’s-associated changes in mouse brains

    For the first time researchers have shown that a commonly used anesthetic can produce changes associated with Alzheimer’s disease in the brains of living mammals, confirming previous laboratory studies.  In…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Drug trial shows dramatic reduction in risks posed by hidden heart disease

    A Harvard-led study shows that the risk of heart attack and stroke among subjects with “silent heart disease” — and normal cholesterol levels — can be dramatically reduced by the use of an already widely prescribed class of drugs.

    4 minutes