All articles

  • Nation & World

    Post-election: What’s changed, what’s stayed the same

    Barack Obama will enter the White House in January with the strongest mandate of any Democratic president at least since Lyndon Johnson in 1965, and arguably since Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933. Signs of a generational alignment, like the ones that made “Roosevelt Democrat” or “Reagan Republicans” household words are apparent.

  • Nation & World

    Redressing five centuries of injustice: A start

    On May 4, 1493 — less than a year after Columbus set foot in the New World — Pope Alexander VI issued “Inter Caetera,” a papal bull that still resonates more than five centuries later.

  • Campus & Community

    Sen. Edward Kennedy to receive honorary degree at December convocation

    Sen. Edward Kennedy will receive an honorary degree from Harvard on Dec. 1 in a special convocation at Sanders Theatre. The honor is in recognition of Kennedy’s lifelong commitment to public service and his tireless efforts as a champion for a range of social issues including health care, civil rights, labor, employment, the environment, and…

  • Nation & World

    Rights champion Goldstone speaks

    In human rights terms, Richard J. Goldstone, the 70-year-old veteran of South Africa’s highest courts and a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, has walked the walk and talked the talk — chiefly by having a role in a number of this generation’s most important humanitarian events.

  • Science & Tech

    Student diggers take Harvard’s roots from dirt to display case

    Emily Pierce ’10 was up to her hips in Harvard Yard, standing in a square hole in the ground, carefully scraping soil as she sought bits of archaeological treasure: a…

  • Health

    Common surgical anesthetic induces Alzheimer’s-associated changes in mouse brains

    For the first time researchers have shown that a commonly used anesthetic can produce changes associated with Alzheimer’s disease in the brains of living mammals, confirming previous laboratory studies.  In…

  • Health

    Drug trial shows dramatic reduction in risks posed by hidden heart disease

    A Harvard-led study shows that the risk of heart attack and stroke among subjects with “silent heart disease” — and normal cholesterol levels — can be dramatically reduced by the use of an already widely prescribed class of drugs.

  • Health

    C. Ronald Kahn first to win Manpei Suzuki International Prize for Diabetes Research

    C. Ronald Kahn, M.D., Mary K. Iacocca Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and head of the Head Section on Obesity and Hormone Action at the Joslin Diabetes Center,…

  • Campus & Community

    Gleason memorial set for Nov. 14

    A memorial service is set for Andrew Gleason, professor emeritus of the Mathematics Department, who died Oct. 17. The service will be Nov. 14 at 2 p.m. in the Memorial Church, Harvard Yard. A reception will follow at Loeb House, 17 Quincy St., from 3 to 5 p.m.

  • Campus & Community

    HRES plans home-buying seminar

    Harvard Real Estate Services is holding a home-buying seminar on Dec. 4 from noon to 1:30 p.m.

  • Campus & Community

    HUHS to offer flu vaccination clinics through November

    Harvard University Health Services (HUHS) will conduct free vaccination clinics throughout November. The clinics will be open to the entire Harvard University community every Monday and Tuesday (noon-3 p.m.) at HUHS on the second floor of the Holyoke Center (Monks Library).

  • Campus & Community

    Gleason memorial set for Nov. 14

    A memorial service is set for Andrew Gleason, professor emeritus of the Mathematics Department, who died Oct. 17. The service will be Nov. 14 at 2 p.m. in the Memorial Church, Harvard Yard.

  • Campus & Community

    Worldly Weissman Scholars talk trips

    Neagheen Homaifar ’10 helped to create a financial literacy program for a microfinance bank in Mexico City, and Samantha Fang ’10 examined practices on trade and sustainable energy while writing articles for an international organization in Geneva.

  • Arts & Culture

    Puzzling through Yeats with Helen Vendler

    Helen Vendler knows a thing or two about William Butler Yeats. She has authored three books on the Irish poet’s work, including her most recent volume, “Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form,” published in 2007.

  • Campus & Community

    Astronomy Department dedicates new telescope

    A small knot of a dozen people gathered on the Science Center roof on Friday (Oct. 31) to officially dedicate Harvard’s latest teaching telescope, a 16-inch cassegrain telescope built by DFM Engineering in Colorado.

  • Nation & World

    Teach For America’s Kopp describes what works, what will work

    The woman who created a national teaching movement out of her college thesis was on campus last week to advocate for broader support for public education. Wendy Kopp, founder and CEO of Teach For America (TFA) addressed a standing-room-only crowd at the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s (HGSE) Askwith Forum at Longfellow Hall on Nov.…

  • Campus & Community

    Sports briefs

    Crimson tie 1-1 at Dartmouth, within one game of title; Men’s soccer stunned by Big Green, falls into a tie with Penn; Donato inducted into the Massachusetts Hall of Fame

  • Arts & Culture

    Looking at race, racism through a philosophical lens

    Tommie Shelby’s airy office in the Barker Center is piled with papers. His desk is a blanket of white. Books and academic journals litter the floor. The look is, in a word, chaotic. The scholar is anything but.

  • Nation & World

    New president, new challenges

    In introducing the featured speaker at last week’s (Oct. 29) John F. Kennedy School Forum, Graham Allison, director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, said, “If there were a really serious national security problem and we could only consult one person, that person, in my view, is Brent Scowcroft.”

  • Campus & Community

    Gary Ruvkun took a roundabout route to science

    Gary Ruvkun has made a career out of imagining the unimaginable, and of surrounding himself with like-minded thinkers who let the wheels of thought spin until they catch on something hard, gain traction, and take off.

  • Nation & World

    Post-colonial wars parsed at Radcliffe

    Last week, a two-day interdisciplinary conference on post-colonial wars got under way at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. The Oct. 30-31 event was the capstone of two years of private meetings at Radcliffe by high-level experts on the wars that followed independence movements in Africa and Asia after World War II.

  • Campus & Community

    Police reports

    Following are some of the incidents reported to the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) for the week ending Nov. 3. The official log is located at 1033 Massachusetts Ave., sixth floor, and is available online at http://www.hupd.harvard.edu.

  • Nation & World

    Obama joins list of seven presidents with Harvard degrees

    When sworn in on Jan. 20, Barack Obama will join current President George W. Bush (M.B.A. ’75) and Presidents John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy as Harvard graduates chosen to serve as the nation’s chief executive.

  • Campus & Community

    Stephen R. Prothero to deliver Noble Lectures

    New York Times best-selling author and Boston University professor of religion Stephen R. Prothero will deliver this year’s William Belden Noble Lectures, “The Work of Doing Nothing: Wandering as Practice and Play,” Nov. 18-20 at the Memorial Church.

  • Science & Tech

    Global warming predicted to hasten carbon release from peat bogs

    Billions of tons of carbon sequestered in the world’s peat bogs could be released into the atmosphere in the coming decades as a result of global warming, according to a new analysis of the interplay between peat bogs, water tables, and climate change.

  • Campus & Community

    Fresh faces in the crowd

    It may come as a surprise to some, but after Harvard men’s hockey’s 4-1 win against Dartmouth on Friday (Oct. 31) and 3-1 win against Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) on Tuesday (Nov. 4), the Crimson are 2-0 for just the second time in 15 seasons. With 17 underclassmen and 10 upperclassmen on the roster, so…

  • Campus & Community

    This month in Harvard history

    Nov. 14, 1899 — In Sanders Theatre, students, faculty, and administrators celebrate Maj. Henry Lee Higginson’s recent $150,000 gift for building the Harvard Union (now part of Barker Center for the Humanities).

  • Nation & World

    Voter turnout approaches some records, breaks others

    Voter turnout in the 2008 presidential election was not record-breaking, but it appears that it will approach the roughly 67 percent of the eligible citizenry who voted in 1960.

  • Nation & World

    Spirited discussion brings some clarity to Obama’s strategy on Middle East

    In the final days before the U.S. presidential election, the two leading candidates were too busy dashing from one rally to the next in a few battleground states to make it to the reliably blue Bay State in person.

  • Arts & Culture

    How the ‘talking machine’ allowed music and dance to cross oceans

    In the late 1920s, with the advent of new technology, gramophone and “talking machine” companies were able to capture the sounds and rhythms of life in cities across the globe. From New York to Havana, Paris to Honolulu, labels like Victor, Gramophone Company, and Okeh competed to record vernacular music.