All articles


  • Nation & World

    Democrats need unified message

    In 1967, Charles E. Schumer, a middle-class teenager from Brooklyn, N.Y., arrived at Harvard College with two goals in mind: to play freshman basketball and to study organic chemistry. At the basketball tryout, the would-be power forward – now New York’s senior senator – never got on court, after admitting to the coach that his…

  • Nation & World

    Power sees U.S. foreign policy on steep downhill slide

    On Aug. 19, 2003, the first suicide bomb to hit Iraq went off with a roar at the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, where the United Nations had been encamped for a dozen years. Among the dead was a Brazilian diplomat, Sérgio Vieira de Mello, the UN high commissioner for Human Rights.

  • Campus & Community

    Once again, record numbers apply for admission to the College

    Nearly 23,000 students have applied for admission to the Class of 2011. While the final number is yet to be determined, thus far 22,920 have applied, exceeding the previous record of 22,796 for the Class of 2009 and last year’s 22,754.

  • Arts & Culture

    Exhibit unveils forgotten photos

    An early 20th century visitor to Harvard – especially if he or she were a forward-thinking person who believed that science was the best approach to solving society’s problems – would probably be eager to climb to the top floor of Emerson Hall to see the newly installed Social Museum. The museum was the brainchild…

  • Campus & Community

    This month in Harvard history

    This month in Harvard history

  • Campus & Community

    Police reports

    Following are some of the incidents reported to the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) for the week ending Feb. 12. The official log is located at 1033 Massachusetts Ave., sixth floor, and is available online at http://www.hupd.harvard.edu/.

  • Campus & Community

    HMS meeting to explore HMS fellowship, grant opportunities

    The Faculty Fellowship Committee at Harvard Medical School (HMS) is sponsoring an information session March 5 from noon to 1:30 p.m. in the Waterhouse Room (first floor of Gordon Hall) on the subject of invitational research fellowships and grant opportunities for HMS postdocs and faculty.

  • Campus & Community

    David G. Freiman

    David Galland Freiman, M.D. was born on July 1, 1911 in New York City, the son of Leopold and Dorothy (Galland) Freiman. After graduating from City College of New York, David attended the Long Island College of Medicine (now Downstate Medical Center SUNY), receiving his M.D. degree in 1935. David completed an internship in Internal…

  • Campus & Community

    Richard Alden Howard

    On the last day in May, 1962, Professor Richard Howard received the following civil subpoena: “You are hereby commanded to appear in the United States District Court [and to] bring with you the entire card catalog of all books, pamphlets, monographs etc. now located in the Administration Building at Arnold Arboretum, Jamaica Plain.”

  • Campus & Community

    Jerome Hamilton Buckley

    Jerome Hamilton Buckley, Gurney Professor of English Literature, Emeritus, was born in Toronto on August 30, 1917, and received his secondary education at Humberside Collegiate Institute where the principal called him “one of the most brilliant pupils” ever to attend the school.

  • Campus & Community

    William Samson Beck

    Physician, scientist, teacher, writer, and musician, Bill Beck’s life gave zestful expression to his many creative talents.

  • Campus & Community

    CES welcomes spring fellows

    The Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies has announced the arrival of its 2007 spring fellows. The center is dedicated to fostering the study of European history, politics, and society at Harvard. Visiting scholars play an active role in the intellectual life of the center and the University. While in Cambridge, the scholars conduct…

  • Campus & Community

    Office for Arts announces spring grant recipients

    Sponsored in part by Harvard’s Office for the Arts (OfA) grant program, more than 1,000 students will participate in 38 projects in dance, music, theater, and multidisciplinary genres at the University this spring. Grants are designed to foster creative and innovative artistic initiatives among Harvard undergraduates.

  • Campus & Community

    Portrait unveiling

    The late Eileen Jackson Southern, a music scholar and Harvard’s first black female tenured professor, is the subject of the latest painting in the Minority Portraiture Project, established in 2002 by the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations.

  • Campus & Community

    ‘Learned exchange’ goal of HCA fellowship

    Now in its third year of operation, the Australia-Harvard Fellowship supports innovative researchers who may be planning collaborative work with Australian research organizations. Sponsored by the Harvard Club of Australia (HCA) Foundation, the fellowship aims to support learned exchange between the University and Australia.

  • Campus & Community

    Call 496-NEWS for closings info

    The University operates the call-in number 496-NEWS for major School and University-wide closings due to inclement weather or other special circumstances affecting the Harvard campus.

  • Campus & Community

    Highlights from 367 years of Harvard presidents

    Simple arithmetic supplies one of the most striking facts of Harvard history: since 1640, the institution has had only 27 presidents. The United States – nearly 140 years younger –…

  • Campus & Community

    Harvard Presidential Announcement: Remarks by President-Elect Drew G. Faust

    Text as prepared for delivery Seven years ago, when I was named as the first dean of the new Radcliffe Institute, I said I was deeply honored to have been…

  • Campus & Community

    Harvard names Drew G. Faust as its 28th president

    Drew G. Faust, an eminent historian and outstanding academic leader who has served since 2001 as the founding dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, will become the twenty-eighth president of Harvard University, effective July 1.

  • Campus & Community

    Sports in brief

    Sports in brief

  • Campus & Community

    Feeling the noise

    No matter how fiercely coaches may preach to their players about the virtues of shutting out the noise come game time, the clatter surrounding the annual Beanpot tournament – that madcap midterm examination of Boston collegiate hockey – is tough to shush. What with all the media coverage surrounding the 55-year-old event, together with the…

  • Campus & Community

    Daffodil Days marks 20 years of fighting cancer

    Although yellow is not often associated with the drab winter months, Community Affairs has gone a long way in helping to change that perception on Harvard’s campus. This early spring, those efforts reach a milestone as Harvard celebrates two decades as a key participant in the annual Daffodil Days fundraiser.

  • Campus & Community

    HRES proposes 2007-08 rents for Affiliated Housing

    Per University policy, Harvard Real Estate Services (HRES) is required to charge market rent for its housing. To establish proposed rents for 2007-08, HRES performed a regression analysis on three years of market rents for more than 4,000 neighboring apartments, all of which were voluntary postings at the Harvard Housing Office by non-Harvard property owners.…

  • Campus & Community

    The philosophy of evolution

    For many college students, deciding what subject to major in can be a struggle. But for Peter Godfrey-Smith the decision seemed obvious almost from his first days as an undergraduate at Sydney University in Australia. “I knew when I was a first-year student that I was going to do philosophy,” he said. “There was such…

  • Campus & Community

    University’s ‘what-if’ planning for bird flu in sync with new CDC guidelines

    Recently released U.S. government guidelines for combating a potential avian flu pandemic closely resemble response strategies that have been under development by Harvard planners since October 2005. Both the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines – available online at http://www.pandemicflu.gov/plan/community/community_mitigation.pdf – and Harvard’s ongoing “what-if” planning say that the best protection against a flu pandemic…

  • Arts & Culture

    Tony Award winner to impart wisdom

    Tony Award winner Michael Cerveris will conduct two workshops for Harvard undergraduate actors and singers performing audition monologues and songs on Feb. 26 at 3 and 7 p.m.

  • Science & Tech

    Symposium: ‘Will brain imaging be lie detector test of the future?’

    For almost a century, one of the staples of crime stories has been the wires, cuffs, and jiggling recording needle of the polygraph machine. In its time, the “lie detector” was hailed as a way to measure the telltale physiological signs of deception, including hard breathing, high blood pressure, and excess perspiration. But in truth,…

  • Arts & Culture

    Prohibition politics created groundwork for modern liberalism

    While Prohibition in America failed to rid the nation of demon rum, it did unleash a wave of change in the American cultural and political sphere whose ripples are still seen today. According to new research by Lisa McGirr, a historian in Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), the fallout from the impossible…

  • Health

    What does it mean to have a mind? Maybe more than you think

    Through an online survey of more than 2,000 people, psychologists at Harvard University have found that we perceive the minds of others along two distinct dimensions: agency, an individual’s ability for self-control, morality, and planning; and experience, the capacity to feel sensations such as hunger, fear, and pain.

  • Arts & Culture

    The joys and perils of building a superb film archive

    When Bette Davis called in sick during her time as a contract player with Warner Bros., the studio was known to send their own physician to her house to make sure she wasn’t malingering. Haden Guest mentions this intriguing fact as one of the many insights into the Hollywood studio system he gained while working…