All articles


  • Campus & Community

    Lester Kissel Grant recipients to tackle ethical issues

    For the third year, several Harvard College students have been awarded Lester Kissel Grants in Practical Ethics to carry out summer projects on subjects ranging from the role of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, to the psychological and social consequences of the threat of deportation. The students will use the grants to conduct…

  • Campus & Community

    HAA president Byrnes to step down, passes baton to Walter Morris

    This spring, while addressing fellow alumni, Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) President Jonathan L.S. Byrnes D.B.A. ’80 remarked, “The HAA was founded in 1840, and our first president was John Quincy Adams. Since that time, a select group of alumni has stepped up and provided leadership to benefit their fellow alumni and the University.

  • Nation & World

    Panel addresses effectiveness of NGOs, gives mixed grades

    The world watched recently as the continuing tragedy in Myanmar unfolded. Millions were displaced earlier this month by a cyclone that devastated the country’s Irrawaddy delta, leaving 134,000 people dead or missing.

  • Campus & Community

    Faculty of Arts and Sciences names Walter Channing Cabot Fellows

    Five professors in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) have been named Walter Channing Cabot Fellows. The awards, given annually, honor distinguished faculty members who have contributed to the advancement of scholarship in the fields of literature, history, or art.

  • Campus & Community

    Commencement information

    To accommodate the increasing number of those wishing to attend Harvard’s Commencement Exercises, the following guidelines are proposed to facilitate admission into Tercentenary Theatre on Commencement Morning:

  • Campus & Community

    Kennedy School’s student journals reflect their interests, policy passions

    The array of Harvard Kennedy School student journals reflects the wide range of their many contributors. From politics to international affairs to economics to the environment, no major policy issues are left unexplored, allowing student voices to be heard on the most important political matters of the day.

  • Campus & Community

    GSD students honored for work in research and housing design

    The Joint Center for Housing Studies honored five Graduate School of Design (GSD) students for excellence in housing research and design at a May 8 event. “We are pleased to recognize these young scholars. Their work reminds us of the diversity and depth of information that characterizes the study of housing issues throughout the world,”…

  • Campus & Community

    Bells ring in Commencement

    A joyous peal of bells will ring throughout Cambridge next Thursday (June 5) in honor of Commencement. For the 20th consecutive year a number of neighboring churches and institutions will ring their bells in celebration of the city of Cambridge and of Harvard’s 357th Commencement Exercises.

  • Campus & Community

    After 78 years at Harvard, Danilov Bells will return to Russia

    After 78 years of refuge at Harvard University, iconic Russian bells saved from Stalinist efforts to eradicate religious artifacts will return permanently this summer to their one-time home, the Danilov Monastery in Moscow.

  • Campus & Community

    Affordable Harvard: A year of financial aid initiatives

    Last November, Louis McAlister sat in the back of a motel ballroom in Bluefield, W.Va., working on his laptop.

  • Campus & Community

    Pharr receives esteemed Japanese imperial decoration at ceremony

    The government of Japan conferred on Susan J. Pharr, Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics, the decoration of the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, at an official ceremony on May 15. The ceremony was held at the Brookline, Mass., residence of Yoichi Suzuki, consul general of Japan. Women became…

  • Campus & Community

    A year of Allston planning

    During the past academic year construction began on the Allston Science Complex, the first project in the multidecade extension of Harvard’s campus in the Allston neighborhood of Boston.

  • Campus & Community

    Crib sheet to help navigate Harvard’s 357th Commencement

    Restrooms: Restrooms for the general public are located in Weld, Thayer, and Sever halls. These restrooms are wheelchair accessible.

  • Campus & Community

    Harvard Law School campaign surpasses goal

    The largest campaign in the history of legal education exceeded its $400 million goal by more than $50 million earlier this spring.

  • Campus & Community

    Radcliffe Fellows include scholars, artists to work on range of projects

    The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University has announced the names of 34 women and 18 men selected to be Radcliffe Fellows during the 2008–09 academic year. These 52 fellows include 16 humanists, 14 scientists, 12 creative artists, and 10 social scientists.

  • Science & Tech

    Bat die-off in Northeast still mysterious

    There’ll be fewer bats in backyards across the Northeast this summer after a mysterious ailment drove starving bats from their caves in the dead of winter in a futile, desperate search for insects in the region’s frozen, bug-free landscape.

  • Science & Tech

    Solar eruption seen in detail

    On April 9, the sun erupted and blasted a bubble of hot, ionized gas into the solar system. The eruption was observed in unprecedented detail by a fleet of spacecraft, revealing new features that are predicted by computer models but difficult to see in practice.

  • Health

    Study identifies food-related clock in brain

    n investigating the intricacies of the body’s biological rhythms, scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) have discovered the existence of a “food-related clock,” which can supersede the “light-based” master clock that serves as the body’s primary timekeeper.

  • Health

    NIH awards Harvard Medical School $117.5 million, five-year grant for patient-centered research

    The National Institutes of Health today announced that Harvard Medical School (HMS) will receive $117.5 million over the next five years for the establishment of a Clinical and Translational Science Center (CTSC) that will transform patient-oriented, laboratory-to-bedside research at HMS and its affiliated hospitals. Harvard University, HMS, and a number of the affiliated hospitals are…

  • Science & Tech

    HMS introduces wilderness fellowship

    Snake bites, lightning strikes, hypothermia, tick bites, and avalanche injuries are not mishaps you ordinarily associate with Harvard Medical School (HMS), or with life in Boston.

  • Health

    Experiment advances cell reprogramming understanding

    The announcement last year by scientists in Japan, at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI), and at the Whitehead Institute that they had each — independently — coaxed adult cells into reverting to an embryonic stem cell-like state was arguably the biggest news in developmental biology since the cloning of Dolly the ewe.

  • Campus & Community

    Kennedy School’s student journals reflect their interests, policy passions

    The array of Harvard Kennedy School student journals reflects the wide range of their many contributors. From politics to international affairs to economics to the environment, no major policy issues are left unexplored, allowing student voices to be heard on the most important political matters of the day.

  • Campus & Community

    Nieman names 28 fellows from U.S. and abroad

    The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard has named 28 journalists from the United States and abroad to the 71st class of Nieman Fellows. They include print reporters and editors, online journalists, columnists and editorial writers, broadcasters, a photojournalist, and a filmmaker.

  • Campus & Community

    Language can be an ambiguous heritage

    Two images fill a computer screen in Maria Polinsky’s language lab. On the left, a young boy is painting a portrait of a girl. On the right, the roles are reversed — the girl paints a portrait of the boy. Once the images are shown, Polinsky, professor of linguistics, plays a single recorded sentence for…

  • Science & Tech

    Mars’ water appears to have been too salty to support life

    A new analysis of the Martian rock that gave hints of water on the Red Planet — and, therefore, optimism about the prospect of life — now suggests the water was more likely a thick brine, far too salty to support life as we know it. The finding, by scientists at Harvard University and Stony…

  • Health

    Genomic analysis gives new insights into cellular reprogramming

    A cross-disciplinary team of Harvard University, Whitehead Institute, and Broad Institute researchers has uncovered significant new information about the molecular changes that underlie the process by which adult cells can be reprogrammed to a stem cell-like state. Their findings are published online on May 28, 2008, in the journal Nature. “We used a genomic approach…

  • Health

    Intestinal bacteria promote and prevent inflammatory bowel disease

    Scientists search for drug candidates in some very unlikely places. Not only do they churn out synthetic compounds in industrial-scale laboratories, but they also scour coral reefs and scrape tree bark in the hope of stumbling upon an unsuspecting molecule that just might turn into next year’s big block buster. But one region that scientists…

  • Arts & Culture

    Acclaimed architect Renzo Piano to design major Fogg renovation

    There are many reasons to love the Harvard Art Museum. For one, an extensive collection of art transports you from ancient times into the present. Then there is the signature design of the Fogg Museum building at 32 Quincy St., with its evocative courtyard, modeled after the 16th century facade of a home in Montepulciano,…

  • Arts & Culture

    Europe travels to Safavid Iran at Houghton

    Houghton Library’s newest exhibition — “From Rhubarb to Rubies: European Travels to Safavid Iran (1550-1700)” — explores European travel to Safavid Iran in the years 1550 to 1700, a time marked by significant cultural and scientific exchange between the two regions.

  • Arts & Culture

    Diane Paulus appointed artistic director of the American Repertory Theatre

    Harvard University and the American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.) announced today (May 16) the appointment of Diane Paulus as artistic director. She will be the third artistic leader of the A.R.T., following founding director Robert Brustein (1980–2002) and Robert Woodruff (2002–07).