All articles

  • Health

    Hand-held disasters

    Harvard’s Center for Health Communication last week arranged a media briefing at the Massachusetts State House on distracted driving, a problem that takes some 3,000 lives a year in the United States. The Gazette spoke to center director Jay Winsten about the problem.

  • Campus & Community

    Reconnecting academic support services

    After five years of gathering input from students, faculty, and staff, after lengthy planning, and after careful thinking about the best way to support undergraduates, the Bureau of Study Counsel (BSC) will return to Harvard College oversight starting July 1.

  • Campus & Community

    Richard John O’Connell dies

    Harvard’s Professor of Geophysics Richard “Rick” John O’Connell died on April 2 after a valiant, three-year battle with prostate cancer during which he never sacrificed his humor or his positive outlook.

  • Health

    Wine watcher

    Harvard biologist Elizabeth Wolkovich is studying wine grape phenology and changes that might be needed in a warming world.

  • Nation & World

    Three strong women

    IOP Fellows Martha Coakley, Kay Hagan, and Christine Quinn talk candidly about their battle-scarred campaign days and advise students on what it really takes to make it in politics.

  • Nation & World

    Albright, on negotiating

    The value of a clear understanding of your country’s objectives and the power of personal relationships were among the insights former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright shared with a Harvard audience.

  • Campus & Community

    The road trip of a lifetime

    Scholars from Mott Hall Bridges Academy in Brooklyn, N.Y., were thrust in the spotlight when photographer Brandon Stanton, the founder of the popular blog “Humans of New York,” featured eighth-grader Vidal Chastanet describing his admiration for principal Nadia Lopez.

  • Science & Tech

    Let’s talk climate change

    The Harvard University Center for the Environment is sponsoring Climate Week, featuring breakfasts with scientists working on the problems along with a variety of climate-centered activities, from talks by prominent scientists to poetry readings to informal gatherings.

  • Campus & Community

    A college vision, made real

    About 200 middle school students from Mott Hall Bridges Academy in Brooklyn, N.Y., visited Harvard to sample what a university can offer.

  • Arts & Culture

    They build, but modestly

    Speaking at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, two French architects advocate building and rebuilding based on modesty, generosity, and economy, with an eye to comfort and beauty.

  • Science & Tech

    When flames attack

    Harvard researchers were able to predict when test flames in the lab were likely to switch from slow- to fast-moving fires, which could open the way to making similar predictions for forest fires.

  • Nation & World

    Whither Iran

    As negotiators worked beyond a deadline, experts at Harvard Kennedy School considered the possible outcomes of a deal, or no deal, with Iran over nuclear materials.

  • Science & Tech

    Seeking public openness

    Four teams that took part in a hackathon at the MIT Media Lab last weekend will go on to present their practical solutions for reducing institutional corruption to a conference at Harvard Law School in May.

  • Nation & World

    Breaking down the Middle East

    Harvard experts assess the rolling waves of violence and political upheaval across much of the Middle East and North Africa.

  • Campus & Community

    An inspiration to students

    Professor of Astronomy Alyssa A. Goodman was named the Harvard Foundation’s 2015 Scientist of the Year.

  • Nation & World

    Massive study on MOOCs

    A Harvard and MIT study’s findings suggest that teachers often constitute a significant portion of the participants in MOOCs; that learner intentions matter; and that those with financial stakes have higher completion rates.

  • Campus & Community

    Harvard College admits 1,990

    On March 31, admission notifications were sent to 1,990 of the record 37,307 who applied for admission to the Harvard College Class of 2019.

  • Campus & Community

    Honoring, and feeling, Heaney’s presence

    A new suite at Adams House captures the spirit of the late poet Seamus Heaney and offers students a quiet space in which to write and reflect.

  • Health

    Pesticides result in lower sperm counts

    Men who ate fruits and vegetables with higher levels of pesticide residues had lower sperm counts and lower percentages of normal sperm than those who ate produce with lower residue levels, according to a new study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

  • Arts & Culture

    Bringing sanity to clarity

    Professor Steven Pinker talks about his latest book, “The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century.”

  • Health

    Mystery motor

    Harvard researchers have solved the mystery of how some bacteria move across surfaces with the discovery of a rotary motor in the bacterium Flavobacterium johnsoniae.

  • Campus & Community

    Senior named Churchill Scholar

    Harvard student Evan O’Dorney ’15 is named a Churchill Scholar.

  • Campus & Community

    The Crimson in Seattle

    Alumni and friends, including many recent graduates, joined President Drew Faust at a Your Harvard celebration in Seattle.

  • Nation & World

    ‘The most dangerous thing in the world is apathy’

    His Holiness the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, spoke about love, environmental issues, and apathy to a capacity crowd at Harvard’s Memorial Church.

  • Arts & Culture

    A close glimpse of James Baldwin

    Houghton Library recently acquired its 3,000th American item, the typescript of an unproduced James Baldwin play — a rich tangle of the author’s obsessions in need of a scholar’s clarifying touch.

  • Nation & World

    Radically rethinking education

    Higher education in the digital age is radically remaking the models by which it delivers its content, the leader of a higher education technology association said.

  • Arts & Culture

    The introspective Laurie Anderson

    Performance artist Laurie Anderson delved into her inspirations and motivations as she gave the Music Department’s Louis C. Elson Lecture.

  • Arts & Culture

    Up for debate

    During two days of programming at the Harvard Art Museums, scholars, students, and the public explored the significance and innovative conservation of Mark Rothko’s Harvard murals. The events highlighted the murals’ return to public discourse and their new role as potential models for the treatment of aged and damaged art.

  • Science & Tech

    Science in the mix(er)

    “Science and Cooking” was the topic of a HarvardX lecture offered at the new Harvard Ed Portal in Allston.

  • Arts & Culture

    Seeing, feeling, being

    A symposium will investigate what makes us human, and go beyond philosophy to do it.