Featured series 
All articles
-
Health
Orangutan research yields conservation dividends
The population of the orangutan, one of humankind’s closest animal relatives, has declined with human expansion. The orangutan population declined by 97 percent in the 20th century and over 90 percent of their rainforest habitat has been destroyed. The factors contributing to that decline – illegal logging, conversion of forestland to agriculture, and hunting to…
-
Arts & Culture
Powerful documentary on genocide screened at Kennedy School
Those who loudly refused to let the world turn a blind eye or feign helplessness as genocides ravaged millions of lives this century and last are sometimes dubbed “screamers.” The Harvard community got an earful Monday evening (Feb. 5) from an unlikely quartet of modern screamers – the chart-topping, earsplitting heavy metal band System of…
-
Campus & Community
This month in Harvard history
Feb. 12, 1974 – The Faculty of Arts and Sciences approves a three-year trial for a new undergraduate honors concentration in the Comparative Study of Religion, limited to 10 students per year.
-
Campus & Community
Police reports
Following are some of the incidents reported to the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) for the week ending Feb. 5. The official log is located at 1033 Massachusetts Ave., sixth floor, and is available online at http://www.hupd.harvard.edu/.
-
Campus & Community
Free rides to blood drive givers
In its efforts to make giving blood as convenient as possible, the Massachusetts General Hospital Blood Donor Center is currently providing free transportation to and from the Harvard campus (or back to anyplace in Boston/Cambridge) for groups of three or more donors.
-
Science & Tech
World’s largest oil firm chief touts research to make fossil fuels ‘cleaner’
The head of the world’s largest oil company said that renewable sources can’t meet the world’s growing energy needs so research dollars should be aimed at both developing renewable sources and at making fossil fuels cleaner.
-
Campus & Community
Neighbors Gallery review under way
The Harvard Neighbors Gallery is now accepting portfolio submissions from eligible Harvard-affiliated artists (including current or retired full- or part-time faculty and staff and their spouses/partners). Artists will be selected to show their work during monthlong exhibitions (solo or group shows) between September 2007 and May 2008.
-
Campus & Community
HMS sponsors information session on grants, fellowships
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. The meeting will provide information about the Burroughs Wellcome Award,…
-
Campus & Community
Newsmakers
The works of five Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) professors are featured in the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum’s National Design Triennial 2006, “Design Life Now.”
-
Campus & Community
Faculty Council
At its ninth meeting of the year on Feb. 7, the Faculty Council discussed the report of the Task Force on General Education, considered a proposal for a merger between the Standing Committee on Degrees in Literature and the Department of Comparative Literature, and was joined by Thomas Lentz and William Fash for a discussion…
-
Nation & World
Current U.S. renewable energy goal too low, says head of national lab
The head of the U.S. government’s renewable energy lab said Monday (Feb. 5) that the federal government is doing “embarrassingly few things” to foster renewable energy, leaving leadership to the states at a time of opportunity to change the nation’s energy future.
-
Campus & Community
Harold Amos
Harold Amos, scientist, educator, mentor, and avid Francophile, was born in Pennsauken, New Jersey, the second of nine children of Howard R. Amos Sr., who worked in the Philadelphia post office, and his wife Iola Johnson. Iola had been adopted by, and worked for, a prominent Philadelphia Quaker family who home schooled her with their…
-
Science & Tech
Arctic hit by global warming first
Scientists from the eight nations bordering the Arctic recently enlisted representatives of the region’s native peoples to help assess climate change there. What they found put a human face on a debate often involving distant projections and abstract numbers. Less snow, less sea ice, freezing rain in winter, and the appearance of mosquitoes and robins,…
-
Campus & Community
Luise Vosgerchian
Luise Vosgerchian, Walter W. Naumburg Professor of Music, Emerita, was born on November 9, 1922 in Watertown, Massachusetts. Her mother Araxy Kurkjian, whose immediate family perished in the Armenian genocide, escaped from Armenia via a long and arduous journey. “Roxy,” who died in 1998 at the age of 102, was both demanding and nurturing, qualities…
-
Health
Poor fall behind in birth control
Modern contraception has come a long way in the past 20 years, what with diaphragms, hormones, implants, intrauterine devices, condoms, spermicides, and sterilization. But the boom in birth control has been a bust for the poorest women in the world.
-
Campus & Community
Spring fellows are welcomed at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center
A former bureau chief for BusinessWeek Magazine and a Chinese scholar researching intellectual property rights are among the fellows and visiting scholars at the Kennedy School of Government’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government (M-RCBG) this spring.
-
Campus & Community
GSD faculty reel in progressive architecture awards
Office dA, the firm of Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) Architecture Professor Monica Ponce de Leon and Adjunct Professor Nader Tehrani, together with Aga Khan Visiting Fellow Aziza Chaouni, received P/A Awards – regarded as the world’s top honor for “un-built projects” – at the Center for Architecture in New York City this past…
-
Health
Saving your self from yourself
“Your gut is a complicated place,” notes Shannon Turley, an assistant professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School. In addition to processing food three or more times a day, an intestine needs to protect you from being damaged by yourself.
-
Campus & Community
KSG’s Shorenstein Center chooses six Goldsmith Prize finalists
Six entries have been chosen as finalists for the 2007 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting awarded each year by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG).
-
Science & Tech
Light and matter united
Lene Hau has already shaken scientists’ beliefs about the nature of things. Albert Einstein and just about every other physicist insisted that light travels 186,000 miles a second in free space, and that it can’t be speeded-up or slowed down. But in 1998, Hau, for the first time in history, slowed light to 38 miles…
-
Campus & Community
Enel makes $5 million gift to Environmental Economics Program
In recognition of the continued growth and influence exhibited by the Environmental Economics Program at Harvard University, Enel, a progressive Italian corporation involved in energy production worldwide, will make a gift of $5 million to establish The Enel Endowment for Environmental Economics. The gift was announced during a signing ceremony Tuesday (Feb. 6) at Harvard’s…
-
Nation & World
Richardson explores what motivates ‘targeting of noncombatants’
What do terrorists want? The question has reverberated in the consciousness of the West ever since the dreadful and unexpected events of 9/11. Were these appalling acts of violence perpetrated because “They hate our freedoms,” as President Bush asserted? Are terrorists simply insane, barbaric, nihilistic, as others have theorized?
-
Campus & Community
General Education Task Force issues final report
The Task Force on General Education of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University has issued its final report, in which it recommends a new program to replace the Core Curriculum that was introduced in the late 1970s. In the words of the task force: “It is Harvard’s mission to help students to…
-
Campus & Community
Kuwait Program accepting grant proposals
The Kennedy School of Government (KSG) has announced the 12th funding cycle for the Kuwait Program Research Fund. With the support of the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences, a Kennedy School faculty committee will consider applications for one-year grants (up to $30,000) and larger grants for more extensive proposals to support advanced research…
-
Campus & Community
Conference in China remembers Benjamin Schwartz
A major international conference was held Dec. 16-18 at East China Normal University in Shanghai on the occasion of the late Professor Benjamin Schwartz’s 90th birthday. The conference brought together distinguished scholars from the United States, China, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia to celebrate and honor the scholarly interests and accomplishments of Schwartz,…
-
Campus & Community
HAA overseer and elected director candidates
This spring, alumni can vote for a new group of Harvard Overseers and elected directors for the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) board.
-
Campus & Community
Judaica Division awarded $1M grant
In 1930, Lucius N. Littauer, Class of 1878, presented his first gift to the Harvard College Library, beginning a tradition of extraordinary support of the library’s Judaica Division.
-
Campus & Community
Prince Charles honored with HMS’s Global Environmental Citizen Award
The Prince of Wales received the Global Environmental Citizen Award from Harvard Medical School’s Center for Health and the Global Environment. This year’s award, presented on Jan. 28, celebrates the center’s 10th anniversary.
-
Nation & World
Seven deadly sins on collision course with market forces
Using the seven deadly sins to examine corporate social responsibility, Kennedy School Professor Herman “Dutch” Leonard explained that today’s market-based economy exploits behavior that is deeply embedded in man’s evolutionary history.