Simple arithmetic supplies one of the most striking facts of Harvard history: since 1640, the institution has had only 27 presidents. The United States – nearly 140 years younger –…
Text as prepared for delivery Seven years ago, when I was named as the first dean of the new Radcliffe Institute, I said I was deeply honored to have been…
Drew G. Faust, an eminent historian and outstanding academic leader who has served since 2001 as the founding dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, will become the twenty-eighth president of Harvard University, effective July 1.
No matter how fiercely coaches may preach to their players about the virtues of shutting out the noise come game time, the clatter surrounding the annual Beanpot tournament – that madcap midterm examination of Boston collegiate hockey – is tough to shush. What with all the media coverage surrounding the 55-year-old event, together with the chance to skate in front of nearly 20,000 slap-shot happy fans in a building called the Garden, no less, the entire “pressure cooker” atmosphere of the four-game showdown is understandably something to behold. For homegrown icers, meanwhile, competing for the title of best in Boston is a particular honor.
Although yellow is not often associated with the drab winter months, Community Affairs has gone a long way in helping to change that perception on Harvard’s campus. This early spring, those efforts reach a milestone as Harvard celebrates two decades as a key participant in the annual Daffodil Days fundraiser.
Per University policy, Harvard Real Estate Services (HRES) is required to charge market rent for its housing. To establish proposed rents for 2007-08, HRES performed a regression analysis on three years of market rents for more than 4,000 neighboring apartments, all of which were voluntary postings at the Harvard Housing Office by non-Harvard property owners. The results of this analysis were reviewed and endorsed by an external expert, Jayendu Patel of Economic, Financial, & Statistical Consulting Services. Furthermore, HRES conducted an additional study of private rental market apartments of similar size and quality to HRES apartments. The results of the market research demonstrate that market rents are increasing at a moderate but steady rate and that HRES rents must rise to keep pace.
For many college students, deciding what subject to major in can be a struggle. But for Peter Godfrey-Smith the decision seemed obvious almost from his first days as an undergraduate at Sydney University in Australia. “I knew when I was a first-year student that I was going to do philosophy,” he said. “There was such excitement in philosophy at that time. Philosophy departments, when they’re going well, can generate an enormous amount of intellectual energy.”
Recently released U.S. government guidelines for combating a potential avian flu pandemic closely resemble response strategies that have been under development by Harvard planners since October 2005. Both the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines – available online at http://www.pandemicflu.gov/plan/community/community_mitigation.pdf – and Harvard’s ongoing “what-if” planning say that the best protection against a flu pandemic would be “social distancing,” or limiting contact with people who are sick, and attending to personal hygiene, in particular, hand washing.
Feb. 12, 1974 – The Faculty of Arts and Sciences approves a three-year trial for a new undergraduate honors concentration in the Comparative Study of Religion, limited to 10 students per year.
Following are some of the incidents reported to the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) for the week ending Feb. 5. The official log is located at 1033 Massachusetts Ave., sixth floor, and is available online at http://www.hupd.harvard.edu/.
In its efforts to make giving blood as convenient as possible, the Massachusetts General Hospital Blood Donor Center is currently providing free transportation to and from the Harvard campus (or back to anyplace in Boston/Cambridge) for groups of three or more donors.
The Harvard Neighbors Gallery is now accepting portfolio submissions from eligible Harvard-affiliated artists (including current or retired full- or part-time faculty and staff and their spouses/partners). Artists will be selected to show their work during monthlong exhibitions (solo or group shows) between September 2007 and May 2008.
The Faculty Fellowship Committee at Harvard Medical School (HMS) is sponsoring an information session March 5 from noon to 1:30 p.m. in the Waterhouse Room (first floor of Gordon Hall) on the subject of invitational research fellowships and grant opportunities for HMS postdocs and faculty. The meeting will provide information about the Burroughs Wellcome Award, Culpeper Scholarships, Medical Foundation Smith Family New Investigator Awards, and the Pew and Searle Scholars Programs, among other opportunities.
The works of five Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) professors are featured in the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum’s National Design Triennial 2006, “Design Life Now.”
At its ninth meeting of the year on Feb. 7, the Faculty Council discussed the report of the Task Force on General Education, considered a proposal for a merger between the Standing Committee on Degrees in Literature and the Department of Comparative Literature, and was joined by Thomas Lentz and William Fash for a discussion of museum planning.
Harold Amos, scientist, educator, mentor, and avid Francophile, was born in Pennsauken, New Jersey, the second of nine children of Howard R. Amos Sr., who worked in the Philadelphia post office, and his wife Iola Johnson. Iola had been adopted by, and worked for, a prominent Philadelphia Quaker family who home schooled her with their own children. This family remained lifelong friends of Iola and kept the young Amos family well supplied with books, including a biography of Louis Pasteur, which stimulated fourth-grader Harold’s interest in science. Harold did confide that an important factor in his becoming enchanted with microbiology and immunology at such a young age was the combination of Pasteur’s use of goats as experimental animals and his own dislike of the family goat.
Luise Vosgerchian, Walter W. Naumburg Professor of Music, Emerita, was born on November 9, 1922 in Watertown, Massachusetts. Her mother Araxy Kurkjian, whose immediate family perished in the Armenian genocide, escaped from Armenia via a long and arduous journey. “Roxy,” who died in 1998 at the age of 102, was both demanding and nurturing, qualities students recognized in her daughter.
A former bureau chief for BusinessWeek Magazine and a Chinese scholar researching intellectual property rights are among the fellows and visiting scholars at the Kennedy School of Government’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government (M-RCBG) this spring.
Office dA, the firm of Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) Architecture Professor Monica Ponce de Leon and Adjunct Professor Nader Tehrani, together with Aga Khan Visiting Fellow Aziza Chaouni, received P/A Awards – regarded as the world’s top honor for “un-built projects” – at the Center for Architecture in New York City this past January. Aga Khan Professor of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism in Muslim Societies Hashim Sarkis was honored with a citation. All three projects were featured in the January issue of Architect magazine.
Six entries have been chosen as finalists for the 2007 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting awarded each year by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG).
In recognition of the continued growth and influence exhibited by the Environmental Economics Program at Harvard University, Enel, a progressive Italian corporation involved in energy production worldwide, will make a gift of $5 million to establish The Enel Endowment for Environmental Economics. The gift was announced during a signing ceremony Tuesday (Feb. 6) at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
The Task Force on General Education of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University has issued its final report, in which it recommends a new program to replace the Core Curriculum that was introduced in the late 1970s. In the words of the task force: “It is Harvard’s mission to help students to lead flourishing and productive lives by providing a general education curriculum that is responsive to the conditions of the 21st century. General education is the place where students are brought to understand how everything that we teach in the arts and sciences relates to their lives and to the world that they will confront. General education is the public face of liberal education.”
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.
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