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J. Bonnie Newman, former senior aide to President George Bush and currently a senior public affairs and government relations consultant, has been named Executive Dean at the Kennedy School of Government, announced Dean Joseph S. Nye Jr. The Executive Dean is the senior administrative officer of the Kennedy School. Newman will join the senior management…

People have been hypnotized to see color where only shades of gray exist, and to see gray when actually looking at brightly colored rectangles. That result wouldn’t be so surprising at a carnival or stage show, but it comes from a tightly controlled scientific experiment done at a Harvard University medical facility. Researchers separately hypnotized…

Helping underachieving high school students raise their test scores to go to college. Buying books for a growing library at a pilot middle school. Providing support for an innovative job training initiative for low-income families. These programs, and others like them, are being rewarded for their excellence by the Harbus Foundation, an offshoot of The…

“We’ve lost our focus. We think we’re in neutral,” admitted Faye Bradley, curriculum director at Ohio’s Madison Local School District. “As hard as we try to focus on one mission, our staff development is all over the place. “We’re stuck,” she said with finality. But the assessment wasn’t the last word on Madison schools. Along…

Robert H. Giles has been selected as the next curator of the University’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism, President Neil L. Rudenstine announced last month. Before coming to Harvard, Giles, 67, was a senior vice president of The Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan, international foundation dedicated to freedom of speech and of the press. He served as…

Jeremy R. Knowles, Dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), has appointed Andrew Murray, professor of molecular and cellular biology, director of the Faculty’s Center for Genomics Research. Murray, who will join the FAS Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology as he takes up his new duties, comes to Harvard from 11 years…

David A. Evans, Abbott and James Lawrence Professor of Chemistry, will be honored on Aug. 22 by the American Chemical Society for developing strategies for making potential drugs derived from nature. He will receive the 2000 Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award at the national meeting of the world’s largest society of chemists in Washington, D.C.…

To find out, look into http://www.yourcancerrisk.harvard.edu. The site provides personalized, interactive information about your chances of getting breast, prostate, lung, colon, bladder, melanoma, uterine, kidney, ovarian, cervical, stomach, and pancreatic cancer. After answering a few questions, the site gives you information about your risk levels in the form of a bar graph. Then you can…

More than 200 children were hitting, fielding, and rounding bases on Harvard’s baseball diamonds this summer during three weeklong baseball camps designed not just to keep the kids busy, but also to teach the finer points of the game. Their enthusiasm led Harvard Baseball Coach Joe Walsh to conclude that “99 percent of them are…

Ceren Gurkan, a high school student from Rome, wasn’t exactly channeling Beatrice, an upper-crust British lady. She was Beatrice. Or Beatrice was she or — something. This summer in the Loeb Drama Center’s basement dance studio, it isn’t always easy to tell who is who. There, every Monday and Wednesday morning, 20 actors and would-be…

Economist John Kenneth Galbraith was awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, at a ceremony, August 9, at the White House.

With land in Cambridge at a premium, Harvard University is looking southward to meet its long-term needs for additional space. The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority (MTA) Board on Wednesday, July 12 voted unanimously to select Harvard as the highest responsible bidder to purchase a 48-acre parcel in Allston. The bids were opened at the MTA offices…

The Overseas Program Office has been established at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government to facilitate the administration of international projects at the School. The Office has primary responsibility for administration and logistics of overseas projects and will work in close collaboration with the research centers and support offices at the Kennedy School. In…

Insulin is like gold to a diabetic, and researchers at Harvard Medical School have found a new way to mine it. The hormone is essential for converting sugar in food into energy; without regular injections of it, people suffering from Type 1, or juvenile, diabetes can lapse into a coma and die. Medical scientists have…

Harvard Divinity student Alyssa May leaned over Claire’s bed, joking with the older woman about dancing and horseback riding. Claire, looking small and frail under the covers of her high, railed bed, joked back, her soft voice difficult to hear. The two talked for a while, Claire saying how surprised she is at the people…

Harvard honored 220 Central Administration staffers in June, naming them Harvard Heroes for leadership, teamwork, adaptability, and work that exceeds expectations. This year’s Heroes were honored in a June 14 ceremony that was attended by the vice presidents and directors of their departments and by President Neil L. Rudenstine, who read a short note of…

Harvard has received an award recognizing the excellence of its environmental programs as well as its record of complying with environmental regulations. The award is presented annually by the Environmental Business Council of New England (EBC), a trade association with representation from industry, consulting firms, government agencies, and some universities. “It’s very nice to be…

As Tom Everett mounts the podium and surveys the room, his commanding presence attracts the gaze of more than 100 attentive and anxious musicians awaiting his direction. It is a summertime Wednesday evening. The setting is the elegant Lowell Lecture Hall, and the players are members of the Harvard Summer School Pops Band. This is…

The newly renovated Sert Gallery opened last month providing increased gallery space for modern and contemporary art at the Harvard University Art Museums. Sert is the result of collaboration between the Art Museums and the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies (VES). Both the Gallery and VES are adjacent to the Fogg and Busch-Reisinger Museums,…

Some Boston residents awoke last Thursday to warnings that a particularly vicious African insect had invaded their neighborhoods. Fliers affixed to utility polls and slipped under windshield wipers announced an “Infestation Warning” and featured a large picture of an unsavory-looking bug. And before School of Public Health entomologist Richard Pollack could settle down to work…

What do Harvard professors read over the summer? Are the physicists reading poetry and the literature professors reading algebra? Are they reading at all, or do books lie spine-up on the floor, where their owners last hurled them, while fishing rods and gardening trowels and chopping boards get far more use? We asked a few…

President Neil L. Rudenstine announced the appointment of a committee of scholars and academics from outside Radcliffe and Harvard to assist in the process of long-term planning for the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Following is the letter announcing the committee and a listing of its members. July 5, 2000 Dear Members of the Radcliffe…

Anthony D’Amico faced a tricky problem. How to place 100 radioactive seeds, each smaller than a rice grain, into tumors inside a walnut-size prostate gland. Properly placed, the seeds destroy cancer cells. Implanting the seeds – called brachytherapy – offers a way to treat early stages of prostate cancer in a way that, for some…