All articles


  • Campus & Community

    Harvard prepares for NEASC reaccreditation

    As part of the University’s 10-year reaccreditation by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC), the University is preparing a self-study report addressing NEASC’s 11 standards (chapters) for accreditation. These standards each focus on a particular dimension of the University, ranging from academics and the libraries to governance and finance.

  • Campus & Community

    Clayton and Ko receive Player of the Year honors

    The Ivy League has recently announced that both Chris Clayton ’09 of the Harvard men’s tennis team and Beier Ko ’09 of the Harvard women’s tennis team have been honored as the 2009 recipients of the Ivy League Player of the Year award.

  • Arts & Culture

    Talent takes to the street

    Behind a large white tent in front of the Science Center, Harvard University Dining Services staff members worked over sizzling grills, cooking hot dogs and hamburgers to feed a large crowd of staff, students, and Greater Cambridge residents.

  • Campus & Community

    Community Gifts raises money for 400-plus charities

    The annual Community Gifts Through Harvard campaign has raised more than $600,000 via personal contributions from Harvard faculty, staff, and retirees. Over 400 charities, most in Massachusetts, were recipients of these funds.

  • Campus & Community

    HRES installs solar arrays on buildings

    Harvard students can do a lot of things, but hovering five stories in the air is not one of them.

  • Campus & Community

    Jerry Mitrovica named geophysics professor

    Theoretical geophysicist Jerry X. Mitrovica, whose studies of the Earth’s structure and evolution have important implications for our understanding of climate and sea-level changes throughout Earth’s history, has been named professor of geophysics in Harvard University’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, effective July 1.

  • Campus & Community

    Mark Kisin joins Harvard as professor of mathematics

    Mark Kisin, one of the world’s most promising young number theorists, has been named professor of mathematics in Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), effective July 1.

  • Science & Tech

    Molecular secrets in atomic nuclei

    For Navin Khaneja, spinning nuclei are like atomic spies. With a little coaxing, they will tell the secrets of the molecules in which they sit.

  • Science & Tech

    Nectar nurtures pitcher plant’s eating habits

    New research from the Harvard Forest shows that carnivorous pitcher plants use sweet nectar to attract ants and flies to their water-filled traps, not color, as earlier research had indicated.

  • Science & Tech

    Vocal mimicking, sense of rhythm tied

    Researchers at Harvard University have found that humans aren’t the only ones who can groove to a beat — some other species can dance, too. The capability was previously believed to be specific to humans. The research team found that only species that can mimic sound seem to be able to keep a beat, implying…

  • Health

    Lack of sleep is easier on older adults than others

    In a recent sleep study testing alertness and performance in sleep-deprived adults, researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) determined that healthy older adults handle sleep deprivation better than younger adults. The findings appeared online on May 3, in an advance online edition of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

  • Health

    Lessons from past explored to expedite future research

    People, knowledge, communication, and capitalism were front and center last week as authorities on innovation sought to shed light on ways to speed up the development of new medical treatments from discoveries in the lab.

  • Science & Tech

    Life in the universe? Almost certainly. Intelligence? Maybe not

    We are likely not alone in the universe, though it may feel like it, since life on other planets is probably dominated by microbes or other nonspeaking creatures, according to scientists who gave their take on extraterrestrial life at Harvard last week.

  • Nation & World

    Nieman presents Louis M. Lyons Award to Fatima Tlisova

    The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard will present the Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism to current Nieman Fellow Fatima Tlisova Thursday (May 7).

  • Nation & World

    ‘Paging God: Religion in the Halls of Medicine’

    What happens when a Buddhist monk visiting the United States is hospitalized, terminally ill with liver cancer? Does religion interfere with his medical care? What about his Buddhist brethren, unable to join him bedside? Who will provide the appropriate services and ceremonies? Well, says Wendy Cadge, that’s where hospital chaplains come in.

  • Campus & Community

    Faust at UMass Boston: Local research universities power region

    The unique collection of research universities, biotech and pharmaceutical firms, and science and engineering startups linked by the MBTA Red Line is an economic powerhouse that is going to pull Massachusetts through the current financial crisis and help drive the nation toward recovery, Harvard President Drew Faust told those attending the opening of a new…

  • Nation & World

    ‘Enormous changes’ in thirty years

    In Chinese culture, the 60th birthday is an auspicious event. At that age, it is said that a person is at ease.

  • Nation & World

    Geneticist ‘who doesn’t believe in God’ offers new conception of divine

    The Paul Tillich Lecture, offered annually at Harvard since 1990, commemorates the memory of a public intellectual who was once “the largest theological figure in our orbit,” said The Rev. Peter J. Gomes.

  • Nation & World

    Obama and the art of the possible

    With the passing of Barack Obama’s 100th day in office, journalists and pundits are posing a simple but all-important question: How is the president doing? Robert Kuttner, author and political commentator, gave his own evaluation of the Obama presidency for the 2009 Lowell Lecture on April 30 in Emerson Hall.

  • Arts & Culture

    Oldest living Holocaust survivor speaks at Harvard

    Aided by a wheel chair, his slight frame bent in part by a curvature of the spine since birth, in part by the passage of time, a man who endured unspeakable cruelty 70 years ago told his story of survival to a Harvard audience.

  • Nation & World

    Looking horror in the face

    Imani was just 15 when soldiers from the rebel group Interahamwe found her on the road in a remote region in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

  • Science & Tech

    Carol Robinson: Pushing a technology’s boundaries

    The distinguished chemist Carol Robinson has used mass spectrometry throughout her career to tackle increasingly complex problems in biology. When she delivered the Radcliffe Institute’s first Lecture in the Sciences…

  • Health

    Cancer chemotherapy: An unfolding story

    To launch his lecture on cancer chemotherapy, Luke Whitesell ’79, RI ’06 displayed an image of an origami crab: a double visual metaphor. The crab is the traditional symbol of…

  • Health

    Older adults found to fare better under sleep deprivation than younger adults

    In a recent sleep study testing alertness and performance in sleep-deprived adults, researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) determined that healthy older adults handle sleep deprivation better than younger…

  • Arts & Culture

    Up Close, part 1

    In stone, bronze, iron and oils the artistic and architectural details on campus boast a dizzying array of fine craftsmanship – both ornamental and functional – ranging over the centuries.

  • Science & Tech

    A collaboration with a long lifetime

    It was a crisp, classic fall day in Cambridge, but little of the golden afternoon sunlight trickled down to Cynthia Friend’s laboratory in the basement of the Harvard chemistry building.…

  • Health

    Outwitting mutating flu during a pandemic

    In a global influenza pandemic, small stockpiles of a secondary flu medication – if used early in local outbreaks – could extend the effectiveness of primary drug stockpiles, according to…

  • Health

    Survey: Nearly half of Americans concerned they or their family may get sick from swine flu

    Following the declaration of a public health emergency due to the new H1N1 virus, also known as swine flu, the Harvard Opinion Research Program (HORP) at the Harvard School of…

  • Arts & Culture

    Adams Pool Theatre

    From a baroque playground for the rich to a theater for the entertainment of all, here’s the curious chrinocle of the Adams House Pool Theatre.

  • Arts & Culture

    Harvard has new poetry Web site

    On an abnormally sweltering spring day, one would expect to see patches of Harvard students sunbathing in the Yard, not reading poetry inside Lamont Library. But a throng of students, faculty, and staff gathered inside the modest-sized Woodberry Poetry Room on a sultry Tuesday (April 28) evening to celebrate the release of Poetry@Harvard, a new…