Campus & Community

Since creation of the House system by Harvard President Abbott Lawrence Lowell in the 1930s, the cultures and traditions of the residential Houses have been continually transformed by students and members of the Harvard community. During the school year, students engage in a range of activities such as staging a performance about race relations in the Adams House Pool Theater, collecting historical items to renovate the suite where President Franklin Roosevelt once lived, and dressing up for a Halloween drag night.

David Blumenthal, the Samuel O. Thier Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, has been named chairman of the Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System.

A growing community of campus support groups, especially minority affinity groups, are helping the University to understand and embrace diversity.

Donald Freeman Brown ’30, who is 102 and a retired archaeologist, digs back into the days of “ancient” Harvard.

These photographs offer a tribute to the women and men of the Class of 2011, who become the most recent link in the “long winding train” of Harvard graduates.

This summer, Harvard faculty may want to start thinking about proposals for the President’s January Innovation Fund for Faculty, which begins accepting new applications on Sept. 1. Launched last year, the fund provides grants to faculty across Harvard for the development and implementation of creative learning experiences for students during Winter Break.

Current Harvard students, recent graduates, and two professors are among those recently awarded fellowships and grants by the American Council of Learned Societies.

The Class of 1941 returned to Harvard for its 70th reunion, with its defining war and its youth long past. Graduate John Ambrose recalls the times.

In her Commencement address, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf says her Harvard graduate studies put her on the path to the success. She urged degree recipients to be fearless and to embrace their failures as they forge their paths in life.

After weeks of rain and cold, Harvard ended the 2010-11 year on a postcard-perfect day of azure skies and warming breezes. Most of the focus was on the speeches and rituals of Tercentenary Theatre, of course. But all across Harvard Yard, where graduating students, faculty, families, and friends gathered, there were thousands of magical moments as well.

The president of the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) today (May 26) announced the results of the annual election of new members of the Harvard Board of Overseers. The results were released at the annual meeting of the association following the University’s 360th Commencement.

H.E. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of the Republic of Liberia, delivered her address at the Afternoon Exercises at Harvard’s 360th Commencement on May 26, 2011.

The Harvard University Asia Center was established in 1997 to reflect Harvard’s deep commitment to Asia and the growing connections between Asian nations.

John Lemuel Bethune received his Ph.D. in 1961 and moved to Boston and Harvard Medical School to join the Biophysics Research Laboratory under the direction of Bert Vallee and located in the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital.

The Center for European Studies has announced its 2011-12 student grant winners, continuing its long tradition of promoting and funding student research on political, historical, economic, social, cultural, and intellectual trends in modern or contemporary Europe.

Today the University awarded a total of 7,147 degrees and 70 certificates. Harvard College granted a total of 1,556 degrees.

Since its inception in 2003, the South Asia Initiative continues the long tradition of collaboration between Harvard and South Asia’s nations.

When Ethel Stafford halted her education to raise her children, she didn’t shed tears. She knew she would return to her studies. At age 60, she graduates from the Extension School with a bachelor’s and plans for a new career.

The Radcliffe Institute on May 27 will honor Ela Bhatt, founder of the Self Employed Women’s Association of India, with the Radcliffe Institute Medal. Bhatt’s organization has improved the self-sufficiency of more than a million women.

Two Harvard College seniors and a Harvard Kennedy School student carry on the tradition of Commencement orations, given in English and in Latin.

Marcel Moran ’11 of Eliot House and Annie Douglas ’12 of Adams House have been named this year’s David and Mimi Aloian Memorial Scholars.

The Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University has announced the recipients of the 2011 Norman Podhoretz Prize in Jewish Studies and the 2011 Selma and Lewis Weinstein Prize in Jewish Studies.

Harvard and Radcliffe were very different places 50 years ago, but the bonds that tie members of the Class of ’61 to Cambridge remain strong.

Harvard awards degree to Native American who completed studies in 1665 but died before Commencement.

Founded in 1973, the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies (RI) promotes research on Japan and brings together Harvard faculty, students, leading scholars from other institutions, and visitors to create one of the world’s leading communities for the study of Japan.

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study has named Matthew Smith Miller winner of the 2011 Captain Jonathan Fay Prize for his interdisciplinary work and extensive research on his thesis, “Surely His Mother Mourns for Him: Africans on Exhibition in Boston and New York, 1860-1861.”

Robert R. Bowie Jr. ’73 will conclude his tenure as Harvard Alumni Association president, welcoming incoming President Ellen Gordon Reeves ’83, Ed.M. ’86. Reeves said she hopes to expand on Bowie’s networking theme over the course of her tenure.

At Adams House, a tradition thrives as students annually paint art in the passageways.

Mike Lichten, FAS associate dean for physical resources and planning, has shepherded graduating seniors through Commencement exercises for a quarter century.