The Kennedy School of Government (KSG) has announced the 12th funding cycle for the Kuwait Program Research Fund. With the support of the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences, a Kennedy School faculty committee will consider applications for one-year grants (up to $30,000) and larger grants for more extensive proposals to support advanced research by Harvard faculty members on issues of critical importance to Kuwait and the Persian Gulf. Grants can be applied toward research assistance, travel, summer salary, and course buyout.
A major international conference was held Dec. 16-18 at East China Normal University in Shanghai on the occasion of the late Professor Benjamin Schwartz’s 90th birthday. The conference brought together distinguished scholars from the United States, China, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia to celebrate and honor the scholarly interests and accomplishments of Schwartz, which ranged from ancient Chinese thought to contemporary Communist politics.
In 1930, Lucius N. Littauer, Class of 1878, presented his first gift to the Harvard College Library, beginning a tradition of extraordinary support of the library’s Judaica Division.
The Prince of Wales received the Global Environmental Citizen Award from Harvard Medical School’s Center for Health and the Global Environment. This year’s award, presented on Jan. 28, celebrates the center’s 10th anniversary.
One of the most enduring questions in school is not about the timeless concerns, like the origin of the universe. It’s about passing time: What did you do on your vacation? That simple (and fraught) question applies even to Harvard Business School (HBS), which for nearly a hundred years has been peopled by future captains of industry, in big companies and entrepreneurial ventures.
Two recent Harvard graduates, both from South Africa, will soon travel to Oxford University as 2007 Rhodes Scholarship recipients. These international Rhodes recipients will join the seven U.S. winners who were announced this past November.
Peter Shaw Ashton, the Charles Bullard Professor of Forestry Emeritus and former director of the Arnold Arboretum, has won the prestigious Japan Prize for his “significant contributions towards solving the conflict between human beings and the tropical forest ecosystem.”
In recent years, Harvard scholars have worked energetically and with great success to create bridges between departments and between faculties, the better to share ideas and foster interdisciplinary approaches to tough, complex issues.
In its final year, the Early Action program saw about the same number of applicants and admitted students as in each of the previous three years. A total of 4,008 students applied this year compared with 3,869, 4,214, and 3,889 in the preceding three years. This year 861 students were admitted compared with 813, 869, and 902 for the past three classes.
Following are some of the incidents reported to the Harvard University Police Department for the week ending Jan. 29. The official log is located at 1033 Massachusetts Ave., sixth floor, and is available online at http://www.hupd.harvard.edu/.
The Bureau of Study Counsel (BSC) will be offering morning and afternoon sessions of its spring-term “Reading and Study Strategy” course beginning Feb. 12.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently announced its funding of a new multi-institution research initiative in nano- and micro-electro-mechanical systems (NEMS/MEMS) in affiliation with Harvard’s programs in engineering and applied sciences. The three-year program has more than $2 million in total funding from DARPA and industry partners.
The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America invites Harvard undergraduates to make use of the library’s collections with competitive awards (ranging from $100 to $2,500) for relevant research projects.
The Kokkalis Program on Southeastern and East-Central Europe, Kennedy School of Government, will hold its ninth annual graduate student workshop on Southeastern Europe on Friday (Feb. 2) from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Harvard’s Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies.
William Arkin will join the Kennedy School of Government’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy as a policy fellow for the spring semester, it was announced in January.
Owen Gingerich, professor of astronomy and of the history of science emeritus, has been awarded the 2006 Janssen Prize by the Société Astronomique de France (French Astronomical Society).
Rye Barcott, a student at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and founder of a nonprofit that works to improve the quality of life in one of Africa’s largest slums, has been named a 2006 “Person of the Year” by ABC News.
The American Mathematical Society (AMS) awarded the Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry last month to William Casper Graustein Professor of Mathematics Peter Kronheimer (along with his collaborator Tomasz Mrowka of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Given every three years, the Veblen Prize is one of the field’s highest honors for work in geometry or topology.
At its eighth meeting of the year on Jan. 24, the Faculty Council was joined by Christopher Gordon and Kathy Spiegelman of the Allston Development Group for a discussion of the Allston Master Plan, and heard an overview of the report of the Task Force on Teaching and Career Development from Dean Theda Skocpol. The council next meets on Feb. 7. The preliminary deadline for the March 13 faculty meeting is Feb. 26 at 9:30 a.m.
Franklin L. Ford served as a major participant in this Faculty’s business throughout his career, as Assistant and Associate Professor, Allston Burr Senior Tutor of Lowell House, McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History, and as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences from fall l962 through spring 1970.
Richard A. Musgrave, widely regarded as the founder of modern public finance and an adviser on fiscal policy and taxation to governments from Washington to Bogotá to Tokyo, died Monday (Jan. 15) in Santa Cruz, Calif.
Betty Ann Orlov Rubinow, 81, formerly of Cambridge, Mass., and Stowe, Vt., died unexpectedly from complications of pneumonia on Jan. 5 at St. Joseph’s Hospital, Tucson, Ariz., where she had lived with her husband, Merrill Rubinow.
Elkan Blout, a former dean for academic affairs at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), National Medal of Science winner, and a leading contributor to the development of instant film, died on Dec. 20, 2006, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The cause was pneumonia. He was 87.
When Andrew Spielman was a graduate student in a malaria lab at Johns Hopkins University in 1952, his future was anything but certain. The use of DDT and other insecticides suggested a dramatic curtailing of the spread of mosquitoes – the carriers of the malaria pathogen and additional diseases. But, true to form, the insects proved remarkably resilient, and Spielman embarked on a career that would make him one of the most prominent experts in vector-borne illnesses, such as malaria, Lyme disease, and dengue, in the world. That career ended on Dec. 20, 2006, when Spielman, professor of tropical public health in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), passed away after a sudden illness.
Broadcast legend Frank Stanton, longtime president of CBS and a former chair of the Kennedy School’s Visiting Committee, is being remembered by the Kennedy School community following his death Dec. 24, 2006, in Boston. He was 98 years old.
The Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, located at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, recently announced its spring fellows.
Harvard University’s Institute of Politics (IOP), located at the Kennedy School of Government, has announced the selection of an experienced group of individuals for its spring resident fellowship program. Resident fellows interact with students, participate in the intellectual life of the community, and pursue individual studies or projects throughout an academic semester.
The Kennedy School of Government (KSG) has announced that the 2007 Roy Family Award for Environmental Partnership will go to the Hybrid Systems for Rural Electrification in Africa (HSREA). The HSREA project provides reliable, renewable electricity to rural African villages through a system of solar panel technology combined with modified diesel motors running on pure plant oil from the jatropha nut.
Featured series 
