All articles

  • Arts & Culture

    The sounds of nature, as music

    The Woodberry Poetry Room hosts an evening of forest recordings and verse about nature, twinning sounds with wordplay.

  • Campus & Community

    In the swing of things

    During the renovation of Old Quincy House, three swing spaces in Harvard Square have become residential extensions of the Quincy community: Ridgley Hall, Hampden Hall, and Fairfax Hall.

  • Arts & Culture

    Back to Birmingham

    Historian Diane McWhorter, a Harvard fellow, finds a surprising nexus between the racial segregation of Birmingham, Ala., in the early 1960s and some of the attitudes of the Third Reich.

  • Health

    Darwin takes flight

    Arnold Arboretum Director William “Ned” Friedman and freshmen from his “Getting to Know Darwin” seminar went to the home of a pigeon fancier. “Darwin not only wrote about pigeons, he bred them himself,” Friedman said.

  • Arts & Culture

    The book club goes online

    Five of Harvard’s regional centers are teaming up on an outreach program to teachers that takes them on a literary world tour, through an online book club featuring readings that illuminate ordinary life in Libya, Morocco, the Dominican Republic, Russia, and Nigeria.

  • 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.

  • Campus & Community

    University statement on HUCTW negotiations

    We remain committed to working with the leadership of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW) to reach an agreement that benefits both our employees who are represented…

  • Nation & World

    Hope for continental recovery, in 2013

    A top European Union official says there are signs that reform measures taken in response to the economic crisis in Europe are working, and that a recovery could begin in 2013.

  • Arts & Culture

    Speaking volumes

    Over two days Harvard hosted a cohort of scholars in medieval sermon studies, a pursuit that helps illuminate the social and intellectual currents of the Middle Ages.

  • Health

    Link found between ALS and SMA

    Scientists have long known the main proteins that lead to the development of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), respectively. Now research shows that these two motor neuron diseases likely share a pathway that leads to the development of disease.

  • Health

    Flipping the switch that halts obesity

    Flipping a newly discovered molecular switch in white fat cells enabled mice to eat a high-calorie diet without becoming obese or developing the inflammation that causes insulin resistance, report Harvard scientists from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

  • Health

    Putting humanity in its place

    Professor Charles Langmuir worked for 10 years on an update of “How to Build a Habitable Planet,” a textbook published in 1985 by famed geoscientist Wallace Broecker.

  • Campus & Community

    Harvard University endowment yields flat return for fiscal 2012

    Harvard University announced today that its endowment posted a -0.05% return and was valued at $30.7 billion for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2011. The fiscal year 2012 endowment return was 98 basis points in excess of the -1.03% return on the benchmark Policy Portfolio.

  • Campus & Community

    Coming back, looking forward

    Members of Harvard’s Corporation and Board of Overseers, past and present, gathered at Harvard Law School’s new Wasserstein Hall Sept. 22 for a reunion afternoon featuring a panel discussion on teaching innovation and a question-and-answer session with Harvard President Drew Faust.

  • Campus & Community

    Losick awarded Horwitz Prize

    Richard M. Losick, the Maria Moors Cabot Professor of Biology at Harvard, has been named one of three winners of the 2012 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize by Columbia University in recognition of his work to understand the intricate, dynamic, and three-dimensional organization of bacterial cells.

  • Arts & Culture

    Bon appétit! Julia at 100

    In honor of what would have been French chef Julia Child’s 100th birthday, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America hosted an entertaining and informative daylong symposium.

  • Campus & Community

    HAA honors four Aloian Scholars

    In honor of the Aloian Memorial Scholarships program’s 25th anniversary, the Harvard Alumni Association has selected four students to receive Aloian scholarships. They will be honored on Sept. 27.

  • Health

    Stem cells need recovery time, too

    A new study describes the mechanism behind impaired muscle repair during aging and a strategy that may help rejuvenate aging tissue by manipulating the environment in which muscle stem cells reside.

  • Health

    Kids are what they eat

    Sugary cereals, oversized soft drinks, and quarter-pound cheeseburgers are among the unhealthy food choices kids face daily. Junk food, most of it highly processed, and sugar-sweetened beverages are major contributors to the childhood obesity epidemic.

  • Campus & Community

    On the streets of Allston

    Approximately 400 Harvard runners participated in the ninth annual Brian Honan 5K Run/Walk on Sunday.

  • Arts & Culture

    Visions of doom

    A pair of Harvard events looked at the artistic legacy of Pompeii — a kind of “Apocalypse Then.”

  • Health

    Controlling behavior, remotely

    Researchers have been able to take control of tiny, transparent worms by manipulating neurons in their brains, using precisely targeted pulses of laser light.

  • Science & Tech

    An invasion of New England

    While new species naturally expand to other places and sometimes disrupt the scene when they arrive, the pace of introduction of invasive species has picked up enormously over the past century and a half, stressing and transforming New England forests.

  • Health

    Finding our way

    Elizabeth Spelke, a professor of psychology, discussed research on how humans develop navigational skills in an event at the Barker Center.

  • Science & Tech

    Managing just fine

    Measurements of stress hormones and self-reports of anxiety show that leaders in stable organizations experience less stress than their subordinates, likely because they have greater control over their office lives.

  • Health

    Pecking order

    Harvard researchers have found that a new investigation of tissues and signaling pathways in finches’ beaks reveals surprising flexibility in the birds’ evolutionary tool kit.

  • Campus & Community

    Mathews and Wells elected to Harvard Corporation

    Jessica Tuchman Mathews and Theodore V. Wells Jr. have been elected to become the newest members of the President and Fellows of Harvard College (the Harvard Corporation), the University announced today.

  • Arts & Culture

    The literary landscape

    Sponsored by the Woodberry Poetry Room, the Literary Homecoming drew representatives from the English Department, the Harvard Review, the Harvard Advocate, Speak Out Loud, Tuesday magazine, among others.

  • Campus & Community

    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.

  • Arts & Culture

    The tale of Benny and Jenny

    In the first lecture of the season’s American Literature and Culture Series, Harvard history Professor Jill Lepore previews her book on Jane Franklin Mecom, Benjamin Franklin’s little-known yet favored sister.