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A below-market rent for a renovated East Boston apartment looks more than pretty good to Javier Loaiza, who is raising his daughter, Dahiana, by himself and feeling stretched a bit thin financially. “It looks like a paradise,” Loaiza said just before the Aug. 21 official opening of Siochain I, a low-income housing renovation project on…

Amidst the anxieties, toils, pleasures, dissipations, and competitions of life, in the stir and bustle of society, and in an age when luxury wars with spirituality … we would devote these walls to the training of warm . . . generous spirits. — William Ellery Channing, in his address “The Christian Ministry,” delivered at the…

The Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR) at the Harvard Divinity School is host to 32 fellows and visiting scholars from around the world for the 2000-01 academic year. Established in 1958 as part of the Harvard Divinity School (HDS), CSWR fosters excellence in the study of the world’s religions on the broadest…

David A. Jones, who has served Harvard as director of Workforce Initiatives since January 1999, has been appointed director of Labor and Employee Relations. He replaces Kim Roberts who resigned in June to return to New York. Jones, who holds a J.D. from Howard University School of Law and an LL.M. in labor and employment…

Employment and corporate law specialist David A. Charny, the David Berg Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, died unexpectedly, after a brief illness, on Thursday, Aug. 31. He was a resident of Cambridge. “All of us at Harvard Law School are shocked and saddened by David Charny’s death,” said Dean Robert C. Clark. “David…

David E. Bell, the Clarence James Gamble Professor of Population Sciences and International Health Emeritus, died Sept. 6, 2000, after a brief illness. He was 81. An economist who served as special assistant under President Truman and as director of the U.S. Bureau of the Budget and of the Agency for International Development (USAID) under…

The Harvard Art Museums (HUAM) are eager to help local schools plan curricula, arrange student visits, and generally make their superb collections available to the Cambridge community. That was the message museum officials conveyed Aug. 22 when they hosted a group of 70 Cambridge school administrators for a morning of talks and gallery tours. Later,…

Economist John Kenneth Galbraith was awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, at a ceremony, August 9, at the White House. Galbraith, the Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics Emeritus, has been a member of the Harvard faculty for 52 years. Known for his many books on economics and social dynamics,…

As presidential candidates Al Gore and George W. Bush rev up their campaign bandwagons, charging out of the summer political conventions and into the fall election cycle ahead, many of the nation’s voters can muster up nothing more than a yawn to reflect their disinterest in the entire affair. It is that sentiment that most…

Gray-bearded and slightly rumpled, Allan Ryan peers over the top of his reading glasses. He has just been thrown the question of whether personal passion is what drives his interest in the prosecution of war criminals and human rights offenders. There is a long pause, a lawyerly pause, perhaps. Ryan is, after all, an attorney…

John Spengler, the Akira Yamaguchi Professor of Environmental Health and Human Habitation in the Department of Environmental Health at the School of Public Health (SPH), was honored in London recently by the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health for his long career of improving urban health and indoor air quality. Spengler, who directs the…

There was singing, dancing, and catching up with old friends under bright blue skies in Tercentenary Theatre on Aug. 10, as Harvard hosted approximately 700 Cambridge senior citizens at the 25th annual Senior Picnic. “It’s a chance to meet all our old friends, the environment is nice, and we get a chance to meet the…

“Keep it real!” Sometimes declared as a warning and other times said in jest, this expression came up repeatedly during the 2000 Summer Leadership Institute (SLI), which brought 45 clergy, lay leaders, and community developers from across the country to Harvard. SLI, a two-week training program designed to aid these participants in better serving their…

The following is a portion of the incidents reported to the Harvard University Police Department for the week ending Aug. 12. The official log is located at police headquarters, 29 Garden St. Aug. 7: A caller reported the theft of her bicycle from the Gutman Library. A caller reported the theft of a bicycle at…

The city of Cambridge is nearing completion of its evaluation of pipe conditions under Oxford Street and may have a plan of action by Labor Day. The preliminary recommendations include pipe lining of portions north and south of Everett Street and some spot repairs where lining is not feasible. Oxford Street will continue to be…

The Law School’s Oliver Oldman has received the National Tax Association (NTA) Daniel M. Holland Medal. Founded in 1907, NTA is the leading association of tax professionals dedicated to advancing understanding of the theory and practice of public finance. The National Tax Association is a nonpartisan, nonpolitical, educational association that fosters study and discussion of…

Oldest U.S.-Japan student exchange program hosts forum The annual Japan-American Student Conference (JASC) is being held for the 52nd time in the organization’s 66-year history; it began July 21 and will continue to Aug. 20. Entirely organized and managed by and for university students, JASC meetings alternate yearly between the United States and Japan, and…

Beer elected to British Academy Samuel H. Beer, Eaton Professor of the Science of Government Emeritus in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, was elected Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy at the July 6 meeting of the Fellows of the Academy. Postdocs receive Runyon-Winchell Fellowships Paula Cramer and Chuan He were among the 18…

J. Bonnie Newman, former senior aide to President George Bush and currently a senior public affairs and government relations consultant, has been named Executive Dean at the Kennedy School of Government, announced Dean Joseph S. Nye Jr. The Executive Dean is the senior administrative officer of the Kennedy School. Newman will join the senior management…

People have been hypnotized to see color where only shades of gray exist, and to see gray when actually looking at brightly colored rectangles. That result wouldn’t be so surprising at a carnival or stage show, but it comes from a tightly controlled scientific experiment done at a Harvard University medical facility. Researchers separately hypnotized…

Helping underachieving high school students raise their test scores to go to college. Buying books for a growing library at a pilot middle school. Providing support for an innovative job training initiative for low-income families. These programs, and others like them, are being rewarded for their excellence by the Harbus Foundation, an offshoot of The…

“We’ve lost our focus. We think we’re in neutral,” admitted Faye Bradley, curriculum director at Ohio’s Madison Local School District. “As hard as we try to focus on one mission, our staff development is all over the place. “We’re stuck,” she said with finality. But the assessment wasn’t the last word on Madison schools. Along…

Robert H. Giles has been selected as the next curator of the University’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism, President Neil L. Rudenstine announced last month. Before coming to Harvard, Giles, 67, was a senior vice president of The Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan, international foundation dedicated to freedom of speech and of the press. He served as…

Jeremy R. Knowles, Dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), has appointed Andrew Murray, professor of molecular and cellular biology, director of the Faculty’s Center for Genomics Research. Murray, who will join the FAS Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology as he takes up his new duties, comes to Harvard from 11 years…

David A. Evans, Abbott and James Lawrence Professor of Chemistry, will be honored on Aug. 22 by the American Chemical Society for developing strategies for making potential drugs derived from nature. He will receive the 2000 Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award at the national meeting of the world’s largest society of chemists in Washington, D.C.…

To find out, look into http://www.yourcancerrisk.harvard.edu. The site provides personalized, interactive information about your chances of getting breast, prostate, lung, colon, bladder, melanoma, uterine, kidney, ovarian, cervical, stomach, and pancreatic cancer. After answering a few questions, the site gives you information about your risk levels in the form of a bar graph. Then you can…