Tag: Katie Koch

  • Nation & World

    Pearls of Persian art

    A generous donation by the late Norma Jean Calderwood — philanthropist, autodidact, and keen-eyed collector — brought a millennium’s worth of Islamic art to Harvard, some of which is now on display for the first time at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Inside India’s pop-up city

    Every 12 years, the Kumbh Mela, a centuries-old Hindu pilgrimage, temporarily transforms an empty floodplain in India into one of the biggest cities in the world. This month, an interdisciplinary team of Harvard professors, students, and researchers set out to map the gathering for the first time.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Using privilege helpfully

    Acknowledging one’s privilege — and using that advantage to help level the playing field for everyone — is essential in the fight against racism and sexism, activist Peggy McIntosh told a crowd of Harvard faculty and staff in the second of this year’s FAS diversity dialogues.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Gun violence in America

    The mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School should galvanize Americans to view gun violence as a public health crisis, says David Hemenway, professor of health policy and author of “Private Guns, Public Health.”

    9 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Getting down to business

    Advancing America’s economic competitiveness should be a top priority for elected leaders, Harvard Business School professors Michael E. Porter and Jan W. Rivkin told a group of new members of Congress attending a weeklong Harvard Kennedy School crash course on the policy issues they’ll face in Washington.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A too-short life, examined

    D.T. Max, author of a new biography of David Foster Wallace, sat down with professor and critic James Wood to discuss the writer’s legacy and his brief time at Harvard, a catalyst for the breakdown and recovery that inspired much of Wallace’s masterpiece, “Infinite Jest.”

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Joining the quarter-century club

    Harvard feted 139 faculty and staff — physics professors and dining hall checkers among them — for their longtime service to the University at the annual 25-Year Recognition Ceremony.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    For a day, geek is chic

    Hundreds of students — hackers and newcomers alike — showed off their programming chops at Monday’s CS50 Fair, a raucous exhibit of mobile apps, websites, and other projects created for Harvard’s wildly popular computer science class.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Lincoln’s dimensions

    Screenwriter and playwright Tony Kushner sat down with President Drew Faust to dissect Abraham Lincoln’s legacy and talk history, politics, and writing after a Harvard-sponsored screening of his new biopic, “Lincoln.”

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Help with kids. And pets. And …

    The WATCH Portal, an online network launched last year to connect Harvard parents with University-affiliated baby sitters, is expanding its marketplace to include tutoring, pet care, and a host of other services for busy employees in a pinch.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Souter, back on the bench

    Retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter dusted off his robes to preside over this year’s Ames Moot Court Competition finals, where two teams of Harvard Law School students went head-to-head on the constitutionality of “Buy American” laws.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    ‘Having it all’ at Harvard

    After an Atlantic magazine cover story launched a national debate on how women balance career and family, a group of Harvard women is continuing the conversation, and is looking for new ideas on how to make the work-life juggling act a little less stressful.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Harvard goes to Washington

    Tuesday night’s national elections sent a number of Harvard alumni and affiliates off to Washington.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Bypassing the Bible

    Ellery Schempp, one of the last living symbols of a series of Supreme Court cases that banned mandatory displays of faith in public schools, brought the contentious battle over religious expression to life for a Harvard Divinity School audience.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    The making of a stellar president

    For all of their differences, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney share an important quality: their outsider status as politicians. But as Harvard Business School’s Gautam Mukunda argues in a new book, the very trait that makes them likely to be high-impact leaders also makes them unpredictable.

    10 minutes
  • Nation & World

    The narrative of cancer

    Medical experts are coming to see cancer not as a disease of cells or even of genes, but as an “organismal disease,” Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning cancer history “The Emperor of All Maladies,” told a Harvard Medical School audience on Oct. 11.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Well, that’s debatable

    Four Harvard experts — on voice, movement, public speaking, and trial law — critique the last presidential debate and offer the candidates their tips for the next matchup.

    8 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Roth shares economics Nobel

    Alvin E. Roth, an economist whose research as a member of Harvard Business School and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences improved the design and functioning of markets, has won the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. He shares the prize with Lloyd S. Shapley, A.B. ’44, of the University…

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Chao family gives $40 million to HBS

    A family that sent four daughters through Harvard Business School — including former U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao — visited the School on Friday to announce a $40 million gift that will fund scholarships for students of Chinese heritage and support the building of the Ruth Mulan Chu Chao Center for executive education.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    The university’s mission, reaffirmed

    As Harvard’s neighbor Boston College celebrates its 150th year, it’s important to reflect on the enduring tension between scholarship for social good and inquiry for its own sake, President Drew Faust said Oct. 10 as she received the college’s first Sesquicentennial Medal.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Feminism without perfection

    Harvard Business School students gathered Tuesday evening to kick off a yearlong celebration of the 50th anniversary of the first class of female M.B.A.s. But as Barnard College President Debora Spar reminded the group, women at the top of the ladder still face hurdles — including their impossible demands on themselves.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A peek behind the podium

    Veteran political strategists weighed in on the blood, sweat, and tears that go into prepping a presidential candidate, during a Harvard Kennedy School watch party for the first presidential debate. The vice presidential debate is 9-10 p.m. Oct. 11 from Centre College, Danville, Ky. The second presidential debate is 9-10:30 p.m. Oct. 16, Hofstra University…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Startups, sped up

    Students from across Harvard’s Schools gathered at the Innovation Lab Sept. 28-30 for the StartUp Scramble, a mad-dash affair designed to take their business ideas from concept to pitch in just 48 hours.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Economist, neurosurgeon win MacArthurs

    Raj Chetty, professor of economics, and Benjamin Warf, a neurosurgeon at Children’s Hospital Boston and associate professor at Harvard Medical School, are among 23 recipients of this year’s MacArthur Foundation fellowships, or “genius grants.”

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Freedom in motion

    Burmese activist Aung San Suu Kyi delivered the Godkin Lecture and took questions from students last night at Harvard Kennedy School.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A president next door

    Harvard President Drew Faust — with a mischievous gift in tow — helped the Massachusetts Institute of Technology welcome its new president, L. Rafael Reif, at his inauguration on Friday.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Explaining the baby bust

    Postindustrial countries from Japan to Italy are experiencing startling low birthrates, but the entry of women into the workforce isn’t to blame, according to Sociology Professor Mary Brinton, whose research looks at more subtle factors, including attitudes toward men’s and women’s roles in the workplace and the home.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Best practices writ large

    HBS Professor Clayton Christensen has built a storied career by, as he puts it, telling business leaders not what to think, but how to think about running their companies. In the two years since suffering a stroke, he’s tackled two other equally ambitious tasks: relearning how to speak, and teaching the rest of us how…

    8 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Block the vote

    Should citizens have to show photo identification to vote? In recent years, many states have decided they do. A group of panelists debated the hotly partisan issue — and the possible implications for poor and elderly voters — at Harvard Kennedy School.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A warm welcome, and a challenge

    Forced indoors by rain, College freshmen gathered in Sanders Theatre and the Memorial Church to become formal members of the Class of 2016 at Harvard’s annual convocation.

    4 minutes