All articles


  • Campus & Community

    ‘Apples’ bear fruit

    I once heard a story about service from a Focolarino, a member of the Focolare, a Catholic movement dedicated to Love of Neighbor. One day, the Focolarino was helping a poor man pick apples that he could sell to support his family. After he drove the man home, the Focolarino was surprised to find the…

  • Campus & Community

    Not Cancun, just can do

    When I and 11 fellow Harvard students drove into Money, Miss., last week searching for the site of Emmett Till’s murder, we were expecting to find something to mark the event credited with igniting the Civil Rights Movement. Instead there was nothing.

  • Campus & Community

    Service and Civil Rights

    Harvard students spend Spring Break helping others and learning lessons along the Tallahatchie River.

  • Campus & Community

    Samuel P. Huntington service set

    A memorial service for Samuel P. Huntington, who was the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor at Harvard, will be held on April 22 at 3 p.m. in the Memorial Church in Harvard Yard. Huntington, a longtime Harvard University professor, an enormously influential political scientist, and a mentor to a generation of scholars in widely…

  • Arts & Culture

    Creativity through cerebration

    Contemporary composer Kay Rhie hasn’t had many watershed musical moments. The romantic ideal of a composer “deeply entrenched in creative epiphanies,” she admitted on a recent damp spring afternoon, is “not my story.”

  • Arts & Culture

    Atkins, Dennehy to perform poems of T.S. Eliot

    In the first lines of “The Waste Land,” a touchstone of modernist poetry from 1922, T.S. Eliot offers an ambiguous view of the very month we are in: April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.

  • Campus & Community

    Unleashed pets barred from Yard

    Effective April 1, unleashed pets will no longer be allowed in Harvard Yard. All pets, with the exception of service animals, must be on a leash at all times. This policy is designed to ensure the safety of residents, staff, and visitors. This policy will be strictly enforced in the Yard by the Harvard University…

  • Campus & Community

    Harvard begins process for reaccreditation by NEASC

    This year, Harvard University is preparing for its fall 2009 reaccreditation by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC). Harvard, like all accredited universities and colleges, is reviewed for reaccreditation approximately every 10 years.

  • Campus & Community

    Catalog, handbooks, Q Guide go online only

    In a plan designed to eliminate waste, provide more options for faculty, students, and staff, and to reduce costs, the “Courses of Instruction,” “Harvard College Handbook for Students,” “The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Handbook for Students,” and “Q Guide and Information for Faculty Offering Instruction in Arts and Sciences” will be available online…

  • Campus & Community

    Lowe appointed executive director of HUNAP

    Shelly C. Lowe has been named the new executive director of Harvard University’s Native American Program (HUNAP). The appointment becomes effective this July.

  • Campus & Community

    Howard Koh tapped for assistant secretary for health

    President Barack Obama announced March 25 his intent to nominate Howard Koh, the Harvey V. Fineberg Professor of the Practice of Public Health at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), to be assistant secretary for health in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

  • Campus & Community

    Blumenthal is national coordinator for health information technology

    The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced March 20 the selection of David Blumenthal as the Obama administration’s choice for national coordinator for health information technology.

  • Campus & Community

    Crimson hold off the Bulldog’s fight

    There’s no stopping them, and there’s no containing them. It’s too bad the team from Connecticut wasn’t forewarned.

  • Campus & Community

    Report on Harvard House Renewal released

    On Wednesday (April 1) Harvard College Dean Evelynn Hammonds announced the release of the “Report on Harvard House Renewal” in an e-mail to the Harvard residential community. The report is a synthesis of the findings of the House Program Planning Committee, a group charged by Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Michael D. Smith with…

  • Campus & Community

    Going South for service and civil rights

    Experience the stirring sights and plangent sounds of a singular Spring Break, during which Harvard students worked to renovate Katrina-ravaged houses, tutored children in afterschool programs, and met — and sang with — pioneers of the Civil Rights Movement, like Hollis Watkins (harmonizing, above from left with students Diane Ghogomu ’10 and Sumorwuo Zaza ’11).

  • Health

    Skin biology illuminates how stem cells operate

    As a girl, Elaine Fuchs borrowed her mother’s old strainers and mixing bowls to collect polliwogs, an activity she credits for her present-day career as a biologist.

  • Health

    Urban areas offer hidden biodiversity

    Urban areas around the world are places of hidden biodiversity that need to be protected and encouraged through smart urban design, said an authority in green city design.

  • Health

    Study: Key to happiness is listen to others

    Want to know what will make you happy? Then ask a total stranger — or so says a new study from Harvard University, which shows that another person’s experience is often more informative than your own best guess.

  • Campus & Community

    Harvard Catalyst grants encourage greater faculty collaboration

    Scientists from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics are measuring how patients’ posture affects MRI imaging of their breathing.

  • Health

    Development of ‘the pill’ examined

    The birth control pill, which revolutionized contraception and sparked a cultural reassessment of the purpose of sex and the sanctity of life, was developed by a Harvard fertility doctor who believed people should have children early in life — and as many as they could afford.

  • Science & Tech

    A mother’s criticism strikes nerve

    Formerly depressed women show patterns of brain activity when they are criticized by their mothers that are distinctly different from the patterns shown by never-depressed controls, according to a new study from Harvard University. The participants reported being completely well and fully recovered, yet their neural activity resembled that which has been observed in depressed…

  • Health

    Five named Early Career Scientists

    Five Harvard researchers are among 50 young scientists nationwide who will have their work supported for the next six years by a new initiative from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).

  • Nation & World

    Experts get down to business at 2009 Humanitarian Action Summit

    In December 2000, Dorothy Sewe and her family — fleeing tribal violence in Kenya — escaped across the border into Tanzania. In the first few days, all 17 huddled under plastic bags in the pouring rain. They camped outside the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, begging for help.

  • Nation & World

    Ash names Top 50 innovations in government

    The Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) recently announced the top 50 programs of the 2009 Innovations in American Government Awards competition. The programs, which represent the best in government innovation from local, county, city, tribal, state, and federal levels, were selected from more than 600 applicants, and include…

  • Nation & World

    Finance scholar Chetty named professor of economics

    Raj Chetty, a public economist whose work focuses on social insurance and tax policy, has been appointed professor of economics in Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), effective April 1.

  • Science & Tech

    Disasters, and how to cope with them

    Nine out of 10 disasters in the world are related to climate change — the consequence of “a new normal of extreme weather,” said Sir John Holmes. He talked about an accelerating pace of floods, drought, heat waves, and catastrophic storms.

  • Arts & Culture

    History of a ‘scribal machine’

    Starting in the 1920s, Chinese writer Lin Yutang earned a reputation as an urbane essayist and translator who moved easily between the literary cultures of the East and West.

  • Nation & World

    HBS helps Jerusalem develop ‘competitive advantages’

    The mayor of Jerusalem visited Harvard Thursday (March 26) and outlined a plan for his city’s economic future, one created with the help of Harvard Business School (HBS).

  • Health

    How stem cells find their way around

    Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers have for the first time identified in mice a cellular mechanism that directs stem cells to their ultimate destination in the body.

  • Campus & Community

    Financial aid program draws record number of applications

    Harvard’s financial aid program made the critical difference in leading many of the nation’s and the world’s best students to apply to Harvard College in these challenging economic times. A record 29,112 students applied for admission this year, compared to 27,462 last year. Enhanced a number of times recently, Harvard’s undergraduate financial aid program next…