All articles


  • Campus & Community

    Personal glimpses into Harvard history

    Since its founding in 1636, Harvard has moved through many great historical dramas. History as a listing of events — as chronicle — has its uses, but often more insight is gained through personal accounts. Great events and small can often be better understood in the light of private recollections.

  • Campus & Community

    Rhetors are revved up and ready to roll

    Before long, Charles Joseph McNamara ’07 will be with Teach For America in a rural Mississippi high school.

  • Campus & Community

    Eleven elevated to officer

    The ROTC commissioning ceremony began in a quietly festive mood in the roped-off area around the statue of John Harvard that sits before University Hall. There, 11 young men and women of the graduating class of 2007 took their oaths privately for the service of their choice — Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marines —…

  • Campus & Community

    Clinton lends class to Class Day

    In his Class Day speech on Wednesday (June 6) Bill Clinton remarked that the great lesson he learned from the human genome project, which was brought to completion during his presidency, is that genetically all humans are 99.9 percent identical.

  • Campus & Community

    Be careful what you work for

    Harvard interim President Derek Bok bid the Harvard College Class of 2007 farewell Tuesday (June 5), urging graduating seniors to consider the true roots of happiness in life, and cautioning that while society values wealth, for most people money does not equal satisfaction.

  • Campus & Community

    Poetry, argument, ritual mark PBK ceremony

    Just after 10 Tuesday morning (June 5), crowds of Harvard seniors in black cap and gown gathered outside Harvard Hall. Family and gowned faculty mixed in, and cameras were soon clicking portraits against backdrops of tree and lawn and brick. The rain held off.

  • Campus & Community

    An exaltation of bells will ring out to celebrate Commencement Day

    A joyous peal of bells will ring throughout Cambridge today (June 7). In celebration of the City of Cambridge and of the country’s oldest university — and of our earlier history when bells of varying tones summoned us from sleep to prayer, work, or study — this ancient yet new sound will fill Harvard Square…

  • Campus & Community

    Four honored with the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences medal

    A pioneer in computer science, an anthropologist who has revised our view of primate behavior, a Renaissance scholar who served as Harvard’s 26th president, and an economist who has helped ailing nations recover economic health received the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Centennial Medal on Wednesday (June 6) at the Harvard Faculty Club.The medalists…

  • Campus & Community

    Toni Morrison named Radcliffe Medalist

    The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study announced that author and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison will be awarded the 2007 Radcliffe Institute Medal at the annual Radcliffe Day luncheon on Friday (June 8) at 12:45 p.m. Drew G. Faust, president-elect of Harvard University and dean of the Radcliffe Institute, will provide opening remarks and present the…

    Toni Morrison.
  • Campus & Community

    Michael D. Smith named next dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences

    Michael D. Smith, a distinguished computer scientist, admired teacher, and skilled administrative leader, will become the new Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences this July, President-elect Drew G. Faust announced today.

  • Campus & Community

    Honorary degrees awarded at Commencement’s Morning Exercises

    Six men and three women received honorary degrees at this morning’s 356th Commencement Exercises. Biographical sketches of the honorands appear below.

  • Science & Tech

    ‘Digital immigrants’ teaching ‘digital natives’

    Students coming into universities today are ‘digital natives’ and fundamentally different in their use of technology than the ‘digital immigrants’ who teach them, according to John Palfrey, executive director of…

  • Health

    Major progress toward cell reprogramming

    Two Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers and scientists at Whitehead Institute and Japan’s Kyoto University have independently taken major steps toward discovering ways to reprogram cells in order to…

  • Campus & Community

    Jason Luke

    You might not know Jason Luke ’94, but you know his work. He’s associate director for custodial and support services at Harvard’s Facilities Maintenance Operations. That makes him the Commencement superintendent who every June transforms the campus into a well-oiled machine for merriment (and solemnity).

  • Campus & Community

    Kate Loosian

    Kate Loosian is a senior project manager with Harvard Real Estate Services, where she keeps an educated eye on building renovations at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. (She has a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Notre Dame.)

  • Campus & Community

    ‘Life classes’ teach local, global ways to go green

    In the offices of the Harvard Green Campus Initiative (HGCI), there is everything you would expect from that arm of University Operations Services: no-glue carpeting, energy-efficient lighting, high-tech windows, and sensors that adjust ventilation by measuring CO2. But in plain sight, next to one of the recycled cubicles, there is also a toilet. The bowl…

  • Campus & Community

    Harvard takes the LEED in green buildings

    If you could fly in a small plane over Harvard, looking down wouldn’t tell you much about the University’s sustainable buildings.

  • Campus & Community

    Michelle Gray

    Michelle Gray, who has had careers as a cooking teacher and social worker, is a customer service manager at Harvard’s Dunster-Mather combined kitchen operation. One day not long ago, she used a handheld clicker to count the number of people she talked to. The answer: almost 300.

  • Campus & Community

    Nathan Gauthier

    He’s only 31, but Nathan Gauthier has had an adventurous life so far. He spent two years with the Peace Corps in Ecuador, studied red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico, shot underwater video for NASA, and worked as a fisheries biologist in Washington state and Hawaii.

  • Campus & Community

    Meghan Duggan

    Meghan Duggan knows her way around sustainability. The marine engineer with a master’s degree in facilities management can talk easily about kilowatt hours, solar panels, cogeneration, renewable wood, and high-efficiency lights.

  • Campus & Community

    The biggest challenge of sustainability: Changing minds

    In 1999, the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) made plans to move its offices to the Landmark Center, a converted Sears, Roebuck and Co. warehouse in Boston. Danny Beaudoin — the School’s manager of operations, energy, and utilities — was asked to look into sustainable design for the renovation: a realm of low-emitting paints,…

  • Campus & Community

    Message to the Harvard community from Drew Faust

    Dear Members of the Harvard Community, Harvard has an important role to play in environmental stewardship. Through research, education, and the planning and development of our campus, Harvard contributes every…

  • Arts & Culture

    Blodgett Artists-in-Residence named

    The Harvard University Department of Music has announced that the Chiara Quartet has been named Blodgett Artists-in-Residence for 2008-11. The Chiara (“clear, pure, or light” in Italian) will be in residence at Harvard for four one-week periods each academic year beginning in October 2008. Recently awarded with the Guarneri Quartet Residency Award for artistic excellence…

  • Campus & Community

    This month in Harvard history

    May 1976 — Before an overflow crowd in Sanders Theatre, Senior Professor John H. Finley Jr. — the legendary 72-year-old Eliot Professor of Greek Literature Emeritus — gives his final Harvard lecture in “Humanities 103: The Great Age of Athens.”

  • Campus & Community

    Police reports

    Following are some of the incidents reported to the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) for the week ending May 28. The official log is located at 1033 Massachusetts Ave., sixth floor, and is available online at http://www.hupd.harvard.edu/.

  • Campus & Community

    In brief

    Allston Room to extend hours Commencement Week The Harvard in Allston exhibit room in the Holyoke Center Arcade will hold extended hours (10 a.m. to 4 p.m.) from June 4 to 8. Members of the University community are invited to stop by for free iced tea and lemonade and to have a look at the…

  • Campus & Community

    Newsmakers

    Gomes accepts honorary degrees The Rev. Professor Peter J. Gomes has been awarded three honorary degrees this spring, including those of doctor of divinity from The General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church in New York City and from Lafayette College in Easton, Penn., and the degree of doctor of humane letters from Augustana College…

  • Campus & Community

    Memorial services

    Westheimer memorial set for June A memorial gathering for Frank H. Westheimer, Morris Loeb Professor of Chemistry Emeritus, will be held June 29 at 3 p.m. in Pfizer Lecture Hall, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, 12 Oxford St. Westheimer died at his home in Cambridge, Mass., on April 14. He was 95.

  • Campus & Community

    Gene Ketelhohn, Cabot House building manager, 60

    Gene G. Ketelhohn, the building manager of Cabot House since 1983, died May 26 at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He was 60.

  • Campus & Community

    Wacker, former Cabot House co-master, dies

    Ann MacMillan Wacker, co-master of Cabot House from 1978 to 1984, died May 18. Wacker was married to Warren E.C. Wacker, Henry K. Oliver Professor of Hygiene Emeritus and, from 1971 to 1989, the director of University Health Services.