Campus & Community

U.S. energy consumption will continue to rise in the years ahead, and along with it, America’s dependence on foreign energy sources. That was the message delivered Nov. 30 by former Congressman Philip Sharp to a group of 36 congressional freshmen attending the 17th biennial Program for Newly Elected Members of Congress at the Kennedy School.

The Cultural Agents Initiative, the Office of the Dean for the Humanities in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and the Harvard University Press have announced an undergraduate essay contest to explore the impact of literature on individual lives.

Five years ago, following a student-led worker-advocacy campaign, Harvard President Neil L. Rudenstine convened a committee of 11 faculty, four students, and five Harvard staff members (three unionized employees and two senior administrators), to address the issue of wages and working conditions for service workers at the University.

U.S. Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte identified terrorism as one of the most significant challenges facing both the Muslim and non-Muslim world. Speaking Friday night (Dec. 1) in the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, Negroponte cited the intelligence community’s recent successes in the fight against terrorism – last summer’s killing by the U.S. military of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the disruption by British intelligence of a plot to attack multiple Western aircraft.

First the bum out: Prior to UConn’s 3-2 upset of the Harvard women’s hockey team Tuesday night (Dec. 5), the Crimson had owned the longest win streak in all of Division 1 hockey this season. Now cheer up: In the final stretch of that eight-game streak, the women beat No. 7 University of Minnesota-Duluth, twice.

Visiting Professor of History Kenneth Maxwell, director of the Brazil Studies Program at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS), recently announced the first class of Harvard’s 2006-07 Jorge Paulo Lemann Fellows.

You may remember Jamie Patrick Shea. In 1999, he was the NATO spokesman whose Cockney-accented daily briefings marked the progress of the 78-day bombing campaign in Kosovo.

As a 4-year-old boy in 1939, Charles Fried escaped with his family from Czechoslovakia in advance of the Nazi invasion. It was his first lesson in the meaning of liberty.

The cultures and religions of Africa and their influence on people in the New World, both black and white, has fascinated J. Lorand Matory since his undergraduate years at Harvard. His 1982 senior honors thesis, “A Broken Calabash,” explored connections between the religious worship of the Yoruba people of Nigeria and similar beliefs and practices that form a major component of the spiritual life of Brazil.

Through its visiting fellowships program, the Harvard Law School (HLS) Human Rights Program seeks to give thoughtful individuals with a demonstrated commitment to human rights an opportunity to step back and conduct a serious inquiry in the human rights field.

The following seniors, listed below by their Houses, were nominated to Phi Beta Kappa (PBK) in the latest round of elections, held this past November.

The hills, alas, are alive with the rumble of bulldozers and dump trucks. While the Swiss Alps may conjure up in Americans idyllic visions of Julie Andrews frolicking on a grassy hillside, a group of Swiss landscape architects recently brought to Harvard cautionary tales of their design battles against the ugly sprawl threatening to overrun parts of the iconic countryside.

On the dustiest days in the western United States, 40 percent of the grime blows in from Asia. And fine particles can travel all the way around the world from…

Scientists have discovered that mutations in a gene known as SOS1 account for many cases of Noonan syndrome (NS), a common childhood genetic disorder that occurs in one in 1,000…

Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) have found that the prostate specific antigen (PSA) cancer screening test is falsely lowered by a factor of two in middle-aged men who…

Overweight black Americans are two to three times more likely than heavy white Americans to say they are of average weight – even after being diagnosed as overweight or obese…

A new study by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) shows that America’s overweight teens consumed an average of 700 to 1,000 calories more than required each…

Ganmaa Davaasambuu is a physician (Mongolia), a Ph.D. in environmental health (Japan), a fellow (Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study), and a working scientist (Harvard School of Public Health). On Monday…

Lowell House senior, literature concentrator, and poet Emily Vasiliauskas has been named a 2007 Marshall Scholar and plans to spend the next two academic years studying at England’s Cambridge University.

At its seventh meeting of the year on Dec. 6, the Faculty Council held further discussions on general education, considered a proposal concerning evaluation of teaching fellows, and voted to…

Free flu shots are now available to all Harvard ID holders and HUGHP health plan members at Harvard University Health Services (HUHS) every Monday and Tuesday through Dec. 19, and at a range of times and days at additional Harvard locations in Cambridge and Boston.

Following are some of the incidents reported to the Harvard University Police Department for the week ending Dec. 4. The official log is located at 1033 Massachusetts Ave., sixth floor, and is available online at http://www.hupd.harvard.edu/.

Interim President Derek Bok will hold office hours for students in his Massachusetts Hall office from 3:30 to 5 p.m. on Dec. 11. Sign-up begins at 2:30 p.m., unless otherwise…

Brazelton receives 2006 Arnold Lucius Gesell Prize T. Berry Brazelton, clinical professor of pediatrics emeritus at Harvard Medical School, was recently honored with the 2006 Arnold Lucius Gesell Prize. The Theodor…

Harvard Foundation celebrates 25th anniversary The students and faculty of the Harvard Foundation celebrated the 25th anniversary of the organization with a formal gala Saturday evening (Dec. 2) in the…

Freshman swimmer sets records At the University of Georgia Fall Invitational Sunday (Dec. 3), Harvard freshman Alexandra Clarke set a pair of school records to take second place in the…

The Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) Wednesday (Dec. 6) launched a new Web site aimed at connecting the research of its faculty with educators in the field. The Usable Knowledge Web site features a diverse set of media – text, video, and audio – to make the leading research of its faculty accessible to educators all over the world.

“Where is the church in the midst of this public health problem? And what does our faith call on us to do?”

By the time poet Emily Dickinson was 14 years old, she had undertaken the compilation of an herbarium, a book of pressed flowers and plants, a hobby among the girls of her time. The herbarium has long been a part of the Emily Dickinson Collection at Houghton Library, but due to its fragility the original had been in a vault for years – the last significant Dickinson Collection item completely off-limits.

At its sixth meeting of the year on Nov. 29, the Faculty Council held further discussions on general education and considered a proposal from Dean Venkatesh Narayanamurti to change the…