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  • Campus & Community

    Commencement feasting, customs, color date to medieval Europe

    The sheriffs still ride up to Harvard’s Johnston Gate on horseback. The free beer flows freely. It’s the 400th anniversary of the birth of John Harvard, the first benefactor of the University, and the 356th Commencement at the nation’s oldest institute of higher learning.

  • Campus & Community

    Writers support Hoffman Breast Center

    Harvard’s American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.) hosted a very special event on May 21, “An Evening With Your Favorite Authors,” to benefit the Hoffman Breast Center at Harvard-affiliated Mt. Auburn Hospital.

  • Campus & Community

    This month in Harvard history

    May 1967 — More than 800 guests fill the Palmer Dixon Tennis Courts to celebrate John Finley’s 25th anniversary as Master of Eliot House.

  • Campus & Community

    Police reports

    Following are some of the incidents reported to the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) for the week ending May 21. The official log is located at 1033 Massachusetts Ave., sixth floor, and is available online at http://www.hupd.harvard.edu/.

  • Campus & Community

    In brief

    BSC summer session upcoming The Bureau of Study Counsel will offer its summer session course in reading and study strategies from July 2 to 19. Through readings, films, and classroom exercises, students learn to read more purposively, selectively, and with greater speed and comprehension. One-hour sessions will be held Monday through Friday beginning at 4…

  • Campus & Community

    Newsmakers

    Kargère awarded advising award The Student Affairs Committee of the Undergraduate Council recently awarded Lecturer on History and Literature Stephen Kargère the 2007 John R. Marquand Award for exceptional advising and counseling for a faculty member. Now in its sixth year, the prize — honoring legendary Dudley House senior tutor John H. Marquand — is…

  • Campus & Community

    Memorial service

    Westheimer memorial set for June A memorial gathering for Frank H. Westheimer, Morris Loeb Professor of Chemistry Emeritus, will be held June 29 at 3 p.m. in Pfizer Lecture Hall, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, 12 Oxford St. Westheimer died at his home in Cambridge, Mass., on April 14. He was 95.

  • Campus & Community

    Homebodies

    Ana Vollmar ’08 of Pforzheimer House and Matt Drazba ’08 of Kirkland House have been named this year’s David Aloian Memorial Scholars. The two will be honored at the Harvard Alumni Association’s (HAA) fall dinner. Established in 1988 to honor the late David Aloian ’49, a former HAA executive director and master of Quincy House,…

  • Campus & Community

    School volunteers honored with Mack Davis award

    Cambridge School Volunteers (CSV) recently honored more than 900 volunteers who have served in grades K-12 of the Cambridge Public Schools (CPS) during the 2006-07 school year. The special reception, hosted by Harvard at the Faculty Club, was held May 14.

  • Campus & Community

    Undergraduate book collecting winner announced

    A family activity rare in this day and age — singing around the piano — inspired the collection of this year’s winner of the Visiting Committee Prize for Undergraduate Book Collecting. Harvard student Robin Worth Reinert ’10 has been awarded first prize for her entry “Songs That Never Die: Community Songbooks in America.”

  • Campus & Community

    Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus announces Respect Award recipient

    The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus (HGLC) announced that Kevin Jennings ’85 will receive the HGLC Respect Award. It will be presented to Jennings at the caucus’ annual Commencement Day dinner, this year to be held in Lowell House on June 7. In the evening’s keynote speech, best-selling author Andrew Tobias ’68, M.B.A. ’72 will…

  • Campus & Community

    Harvard Foundation honors Knowles, students

    The Harvard Foundation recently honored members of the University community who have made outstanding contributions to improving intercultural and race relations at the College. More than 40 students and one distinguished faculty member were presented with awards at the annual Harvard Foundation Student/Faculty Awards Dinner held on May 4 at Quincy House in memory of…

  • Campus & Community

    Reunions

    This Commencement season, reunion activities for the Classes of 1987, 1992, 1997, and 2002 will be held June 7-10. Members of those classes can contact Jen Halloran at (617) 495-2555 with any reunion questions. Individuals planning on attending their fifth Harvard reunion can register for events and housing at http://classes.harvard.edu/college/2002.

  • Campus & Community

    Rothschild, Enlightenment scholar, named FAS professor

    Emma Rothschild, one of the leading historians of the Enlightenment whose extensive scholarly career has focused on the history of European economic ideas, has been appointed professor of history in Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), effective July 1, 2007.

  • Campus & Community

    Holiday hours for workout facilities…and more

    Harvard Recreation has announced its hours of operation for the Memorial Day weekend for the following facilities: Hemenway Gym, Gordon Track and Field Center, Blodgett Pool, and the Quadrangle Recreational Athletics Center (QRAC).

  • Campus & Community

    School volunteers honored with Mack Davis award

    Cambridge School Volunteers (CSV) recently honored more than 900 volunteers who have served in grades K-12 of the Cambridge Public Schools (CPS) during the 2006-07 school year. The special reception, hosted by Harvard at the Faculty Club, was held May 14.

  • Campus & Community

    Eggs, nests make colorful bedfellows at HMNH

    Large and small, plain and colored, splotched and dotted, eggs from the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology’s vast collection are on display at the Harvard Museum of Natural History in a new exhibition of eggs and nests.

  • Campus & Community

    ‘I want to know what it is to be a human being’

    One day earlier this month, Sean Dorrance Kelly was at work in his sunny Emerson Hall office. On one side of his desk were books — a ceiling-high, room-wide stack of tomes ranging from Greek editions of Homer and contemporary works of neuroscience to books on twenthieth-century French, German, and Anglo-American philosophy.

  • Campus & Community

    In a first, scientists develop tiny implantable biocomputers

    Researchers at Harvard and Princeton universities have taken a crucial step toward building biological computers, tiny implantable devices that can monitor the activities and characteristics of human cells. The information provided by these “molecular doctors,” constructed entirely of DNA, RNA, and proteins, could eventually revolutionize medicine by directing therapies only to diseased cells or tissues.

  • Campus & Community

    Vogel hopes to help expedite Sino-Japanese détente

    In 1978, Deng Xiaoping visited Japan. Although the trip made little impression on the West, Ezra Vogel calls it one of the greatest meetings between national leaders of the 20th century. In fact, it was the first meeting between top leaders of the two countries in 2,500 years.

  • Campus & Community

    Tehran’s building murals recreated

    When Fotini Christia, a Ph.D. candidate in public policy at the Kennedy School, first arrived in Tehran to study Persian, she was struck by the enormous murals that dominated the city.

  • Campus & Community

    A long way from summer camp — building hope for refugees in settlement

    How much can a few college students really accomplish during two months in Africa? Turns out, quite a lot.

  • Campus & Community

    Harvard, Cambridge establish Joint Center for History and Economics

    Crossing academic disciplines and the Atlantic Ocean, the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) and King’s College, Cambridge, have established the Joint Center for History and Economics (JCHE). The JCHE will facilitate and encourage interdisciplinary research and learning in the social sciences and the humanities.

  • Campus & Community

    Amartya Sen talks about the importance of ethics in academe

    In 1976, in the education journal Change, President Derek Bok famously asked, “Can ethics be taught?” At the time, few universities and even fewer faculty specialized in ethics; philosophers rarely applied their moral insights to real-world problems; and doctors, lawyers, businesspersons, and policymakers usually had little or no ethics training, even as the world was…

  • Campus & Community

    Robert Darnton named Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and director of the University Library

    Robert Darnton, currently the Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of European History at Princeton University, will become Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and director of the Harvard University Library, effective July 1, 2007, Provost Steven E. Hyman announced today (May 22).

  • Campus & Community

    Longtime employee, teaching assistant, student Carroll dies at 65

    Charles “Chuck” Carroll, longtime Harvard Division of Continuing Education (DCE) employee and a Harvard graduate, died on May 21, after succumbing to a rare blood disease. He was 65.

  • Campus & Community

    A tale of two scholars: The Darwin debate at Harvard

    Few people have left a more indelible imprint on Harvard than Louis Agassiz.

  • Campus & Community

    Yield for the Class of 2011 nears 80 percent

    Nearly 80 percent of the students admitted to the Class of 2011 will enter Harvard in September, identical to last year’s Class of 2010. The yield may rise slightly once the final returns are in, including about 35 students who will be admitted from the waiting list over the coming weeks.

  • Campus & Community

    Barbara J. Grosz named interim dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study

    Barbara J. Grosz, Higgins Professor of Natural Sciences in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and dean of science at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, will serve as interim dean of Radcliffe, effective July 1, 2007, President-elect Drew G. Faust announced today (May 11).

  • Nation & World

    At CGIS, attorney Amsterdam blasts Russian Federation, others

    “We’ve got to stop blaming Vladimir Putin,” Robert Amsterdam told his listeners at the Center for Government and International Studies Tuesday morning (May 15). “That does us no good.