All articles

  • Science & Tech

    Can iPads help students learn science? Yes

    A new study by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics shows that students grasp the unimaginable emptiness of space more effectively when they use iPads to explore 3-D simulations of the universe, compared with traditional classroom instruction.

  • Nation & World

    Mandela’s legacy

    Harvard South Africa specialists discuss the legacy of Nelson Mandela and the future of the country he changed.

  • Campus & Community

    How it really happened

    Professor Annette Gordon-Reed was at the Ed Portal to talk about her scholarship on the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.

  • Arts & Culture

    The power of trans

    “Trans Arts” was a two-hour panel Wednesday of poets, critics, and performers who in some cases identify with the gender opposite from the bodies into which they were born.

  • Health

    Pinpointing the higher cost of a healthy diet

    The healthiest diets cost about $1.50 more per day than the least healthy diets, according to new research from Harvard School of Public Health. The finding is based on the most comprehensive examination to date comparing prices of healthy foods and diet patterns against less healthy ones.

  • Health

    Other unknowns in health care rollout

    Politics and change are the only sure things ahead in the continued implementation of the Affordable Care Act, according to a panel of experts at the Harvard School of Public Health.

  • Campus & Community

    Business School to dedicate Tata Hall

    Harvard Business School will soon have a new home for executive education with the dedication Monday of Tata Hall.

  • Campus & Community

    Liu named Marshall Scholar

    Brandon Liu has been named one of 36 students nationwide to receive a Marshall Scholarship, which will allow him to study for two years at a university in the United Kingdom.

  • Health

    Polly want a vocabulary?

    Irene Pepperberg, best known for her work with an African grey parrot named Alex — whose intelligence was estimated as equal to that of a 6-year-old child — recently relocated her lab to Harvard, where she continues to explore the origins of intelligence by working with birds.

    grey parrot
  • Nation & World

    Universities as peacemakers

    A panel of experts and scholars from a range of fields convened at Harvard Divinity School to explore the role that universities can play in forging interreligious dialogue and peacemaking.

  • Nation & World

    Majority of millennials don’t support health care reform

    A new national poll of America’s 18- to 29-year-olds by the Institute of Politics finds a solid majority of millennials disapprove of the comprehensive health reform package that the president signed into law in 2010, regardless of whether the law is referred to as the Affordable Care Act (56 percent disapprove) or “Obamacare” (57 percent…

  • Nation & World

    Are U.S. students falling behind?

    The results of the latest program for international student assessment tests have been released, and there is both good news and bad news to report for U.S. students.

  • Campus & Community

    New lifestyles for Stone Hall

    Since students moved back into Quincy House’s Stone Hall in August, after 15 months of construction, they have explored and utilized the new academic, social, and study spaces in creative ways.

  • Arts & Culture

    How to speak American

    Harvard University Press delivers the flavor and idiosyncrasies of our spoken language in a new online version of the acclaimed “Dictionary of American Regional English.”

  • Arts & Culture

    Classroom magic

    A.R.T. Artistic Director Diane Paulus and Shakespeare scholar Marjorie Garber collaborated on a fall freshman seminar titled “Theater and Magic.”

  • Science & Tech

    Airmail, to your door

    Harvard engineering Professor Robert Wood lends his perspective to Amazon’s proposal to start a flying drone delivery service within a few years. His verdict is that FAA regulations and liability concerns will likely be bigger hurdles than the technology.

  • Campus & Community

    Harvard announces Evergrande support of three initiatives

    Harvard University announced today that Evergrande Group, an integrated industry leader based in China, has provided Harvard with University-wide, interdisciplinary support for three major initiatives.

  • Health

    ‘A once-in-human-history opportunity’

    A new report chaired by Harvard economist and University Professor Lawrence Summers says that eliminating health disparities between rich and poor nations is not only possible by 2035, it’s cost-effective. The study also sets out the steps to achieve it.

  • Arts & Culture

    A character fit for a novel

    For 13 months from 1940 to 1941, Harvard graduate Varian Fry forged papers and planned rescue routes from occupied France for a list of people that reads like a Who’s Who of Europe’s cultural and political elite. Author Julie Orringer is spending her year at Radcliffe working on a novel about Fry’s life.

  • Arts & Culture

    Persian inspiration

    Farrin Abbas Zadeh, a visiting fellow in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, has mounted an art show called “A Window to Heaven: Motifs of Nature in Life and Dream.”

  • Campus & Community

    Gripes between bites

    A Pusey Library exhibit, “Dining and Discontentment,” is just one of many at Harvard that illustrate the power of investigating material artifacts in order to understand the past.

  • Health

    New hope for imperiled children

    A new suite of courses designed by the Harvard School of Public Health’s FXB Center for Health and Human Rights aims to bring academic rigor to the field of child protection.

  • Campus & Community

    A challenge from the deans

    Harvard’s deans and the University’s provost have announced a new competition, challenging students to propose sustainable ideas that would improve urban life by 2030.

  • Arts & Culture

    ‘Feminine Mystique’ at 50

    A revealing exhibit at the Schlesinger Library charts the evolution of Betty Friedan’s seminal work “The Feminine Mystique.” What began as a college reunion survey morphed into a treatise that looked deeply into gender, power, and sexuality.

  • Nation & World

    German central banker sees walls in need of mending

    In a Harvard talk the head of Germany’s central bank advocated steps to de-link failing governments and banks from the inflation-fighting monetary policy of central banks.

  • Nation & World

    New Frontier Awards honor two

    Jack Schlossberg, grandson of President John F. Kennedy, honored the founder of an online charity that supports public schools and a combat veteran who is now a congresswoman during the 2013 John F. Kennedy New Frontier Awards.

  • Nation & World

    Companies or coverage

    The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear challenges by some for-profit companies that have a religious objection to a mandate under the Affordable Care Act that employers must provide employees with health insurance that includes contraceptive coverage. In a question-and-answer session, Harvard Law Professor Mark Tushnet examines what’s at stake in the suits.

  • Campus & Community

    Tuning into the whistleblower

    Edward Snowden, who leaked classified documents to the press, was the subject of the Ed Portal’s mock trial, as local residents determined his fate.

  • Campus & Community

    The divine, online

    Harvard Divinity School has created its first online, interactive course, with help from HarvardX, to debut in January.

  • Science & Tech

    Probing how the past behaved

    Harvard faculty and graduate students lectured, organized, and moderated in big ways throughout a four-day annual meeting in Boston of the History of Science Society.