All articles


  • Nation & World

    Perspective at the Forum

    One forum, one stage, and one podium — it’s potentially deadly territory for photographers to document night after night. Yet over the years, four Harvard University Photographers — Jon Chase, Rose Lincoln, Stephanie Mitchell, and Kris Snibbe — have made the most of the multitiered space of the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at Harvard…

  • Campus & Community

    Sunstein a University Professor

    Cass Sunstein, regarded as one of the most influential legal scholars of his generation, has been named a University Professor, Harvard’s highest honor for a faculty member.

  • Health

    Wonders of attraction

    Naomi E. Pierce talked about her research on symbiosis as part of the “Evolution Matters” lecture series.

  • Science & Tech

    A clarion call for science

    Harvard President Drew Faust called for the scientific community to unite in its efforts to press Congress for continued federal research support during a speech to the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

  • Arts & Culture

    James Wood’s lighter side

    James Wood, Harvard professor and New Yorker critic, talked to the Gazette about his new book, “The Fun Stuff,” losing himself in music, and a looser approach to fiction.

  • Campus & Community

    Technology to the classroom

    A two-week seminar in January offered Harvard doctoral students the chance to learn from experts from across the University about using technology to support education.

  • Science & Tech

    A groundswell on climate change

    More vigorous grassroots social action is needed to drive the reforms that could address climate change, panelists said during a discussion at Sanders Theatre.

  • Nation & World

    Saving the mother river

    The Sangam — the point where the Ganges, Yamuna, and the mythical Saraswati rivers meet — is one of the holiest spots in India, drawing millions of Hindus for the Kumbh Mela festival. As a group of Harvard students learned, it’s also a place where centuries-old religious practices and modern-day environmental politics collide.

  • Arts & Culture

    Harvard filmmakers in Berlin

    Filmmakers with Harvard ties are showing, speaking, and mingling at the Berlinale, the Berlin International Film Festival.

  • Health

    Cutting costs, buoying health care

    A Harvard Medical School lecturer and former head of the federal agency overseeing Medicare and Medicaid shared his experiences pushing for improved health care quality, saying that teamwork, cost curtailment, and a focus on patients are keys to success.

  • Nation & World

    Confronting the drug war

    Professor Charles J. Ogletree joined writer-director Eugene Jarecki for a Q&A after a screening of Jarecki’s documentary, “The House I Live In,” Feb. 5 at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum.

  • Campus & Community

    Faculty Council meeting held Feb. 13

    On Feb. 13, the Faculty Council heard presentations on the Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching and from the Standing Committee on Women.

  • Science & Tech

    Using explosions to power soft robots

    Using small explosions produced by a mix of methane and oxygen, researchers at Harvard have designed a soft robot that can leap as much as a foot in the air.

  • Campus & Community

    State of the Union: students weigh in

    Hundreds of students from both sides of the political aisle gathered at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum for a “State of the Union” watch party sponsored by the Institute of Politics (IOP).

  • Health

    Go with your gut

    Peter Turnbaugh and co-authors Corinne Ferrier Maurice and Henry Joseph Haiser show that as drugs are administered, the activity of human gut microbes can change dramatically. Understanding how those changes affect drug chemistry could help researchers to design drugs that work more effectively and antibiotics that more specifically target pathogens.

  • Arts & Culture

    Saga of a Civil War surgeon

    A lecture series on medicine in the Civil War continues at Harvard Medical School with a look at Zabdiel Boylston Adams, a descendant of an iconic American founding family who served heroically as both a doctor and an infantry officer.

  • Nation & World

    How the big speech fared

    After Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, Harvard College students at the Institute of Politics watch party offered their first impressions of President Obama’s second-term agenda.

  • Campus & Community

    Psychologist honored by the APS

    The Association for Psychological Science has awarded John R. Weisz the James McKeen Cattell Lifetime Achievement Award for Applied Research.

  • Campus & Community

    Applications open for M-RCBG senior fellows program

    The Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government (M-RCBG) is accepting applications for its senior fellows program.

  • Science & Tech

    Robots with lift

    Using small explosions produced by a mix of methane and oxygen, researchers at Harvard have designed a soft robot that can leap as much as a foot in the air. That ability to jump could one day prove critical in allowing the robots to avoid obstacles during search and rescue operations.

  • Campus & Community

    Meeting opportunities at the fair

    Attendance at the recent Harvard Start-Up Career Fair was up 65 percent from last year, indicating to Scott LaChapelle, assistant director of technology platforms and new employer development at the Office of Career Services, that the event resonated for both students and potential employers.

  • Campus & Community

    Rene Kuhn Bryant passes away

    Rene Kuhn Bryant of Lexington, Mass., a former associate editor of the Harvard Library Bulletin, died Jan. 30 after a long illness.

  • Campus & Community

    Faculty author series at Widener

    Harvard College Dean Evelynn M. Hammonds is sponsoring a book talk series featuring Professors John Dowling, Jennifer Hochschild, and Jill Lepore.

  • Science & Tech

    New ways to fund science

    As research funding dwindles, scientists need to rethink their methods for supporting the most promising projects, and how they communicate their work to the public, Nobel Prize–winning geneticist Paul Nurse told an audience of Harvard scientists.

  • Arts & Culture

    Sound that travels

    Grad students discussed issues of appropriation and collaboration during “Africa Remix: Producing and Presenting African Musics Abroad” at the Barker Center.

  • Arts & Culture

    A remembrance of things Proust

    Ahead at Harvard is a semester of celebrating Marcel Proust, whose landmark “Swann’s Way” was published in 1913.

  • Nation & World

    Vatican in flux

    The Gazette asked Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, a professor of Roman Catholic theological studies at the Divinity School, to weigh in on the decision by Pope Benedict XVI to step down.

  • Arts & Culture

    Violence, meet nonviolence

    Starting in 2014 at the Mahindra Humanities Center, a three-year, interdisciplinary seminar and lecture series, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will investigate the interdependence of violence and nonviolence.

  • Arts & Culture

    A different take on Tut

    French Egyptologist Marc Gabolde offered a different interpretation of the DNA evidence on King Tut’s lineage in a talk at Harvard’s Science Center.

  • Science & Tech

    Technology’s new frontier

    Scholars are beginning to learn what’s working and what’s not when it comes to using new media to get people to do what you want, and a conference on “Behavioral Economics, Social Media, and Apps” at Harvard Law School Feb. 6 brought together experts from academia and business to discuss it.