It was a time to free one’s mind, think outside the box, and consider some big ideas. At the invitation of the Center for International Development (CID), nearly 100 representatives of academia, government, and industry met at the Kennedy School on Sept. 9 for the “Blue Sky Conference” – an opportunity to discuss unorthodox notions that might ordinarily be dismissed as “pie in the sky.”
If it’s really true that we are what we eat, most of us should run, not walk, over to Harvard’s first-ever Farmers’ Market, to rehabilitate ourselves from the world of unhealthful eating and mediocre grocery store produce.
Sidney Verba, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and director of the University Library, is retiring. He will be stepping down at the end of the academic year, June 30, 2007, interim President Derek Bok has announced.
Harvard University’s endowment earned a 16.7 percent return during the year ending June 30, 2006, bringing the endowment’s overall value to $29.2 billion. The continued strong returns reinforce the endowment’s critical support for Harvard’s academic programs and mission. In the 2006 fiscal year, endowment dollars provided almost a third of Harvard’s operating budget, or over $930 million.
With change comes opportunity, the adage goes. That old saying has become words to live by at Harvard Management Company (HMC). With a new president and CEO in Mohamed El-Erian, with new heads of five critical areas beneath him, and with new staff in those five areas just starting to filter in, it may be a while before it feels like same old, same old on the 16th floor of Boston’s Federal Reserve Building where HMC has its offices.
Harvard faculty members and a Radcliffe fellow probing the mysteries of stem cells, the early universe, the modern practice of surgery, and the significance of public sights and modern ruins were honored Tuesday (Sept. 19) with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s $500,000, no-strings-attached ‘genius grants.’
Harvard Recycling and Waste Management fueled its truck with used vegetable oil from the Annenberg Hall kitchen this past Tuesday (Sept. 19) – marking a first for a Facilities Maintenance Operations (FMO) vehicle. According to recycling and waste management supervisor for FMO Rob Gogan, the oil performed “identical to diesel.”
The third annual RiverSing, a free and open-to-the-public event celebrating the first day of autumn and the beauty of the Charles River parklands, will be held Sept. 21 along the Weeks Memorial Footbridge linking Allston and Cambridge. Presented by the Revels and the Charles River Conservancy, the theme of this year’s RiverSing is “Bridging the Charles with Voice and Light.”
Following are some of the incidents reported to the Harvard University Police Department for the week ending Sept. 11. The official log is located at 1033 Massachusetts Ave., sixth floor, and is available online at http://www.hupd.harvard.edu/.
At its first meeting of the year on Sept. 13, the Faculty Council welcomed new members and elected subcommittees for 2006-2007, discussed the status of a proposal for general education,…
A memorial service for Charles W. Dunn will be held in the Memorial Church Nov. 3 at 2 p.m. Donations may be made to the Charles W. Dunn Book Fund, 110 Widener Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA 02138.
Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government (KSG) recently announced the establishment of the Kistefos Public Service Fellowship. The fellowship will be funded through a donation of more than $1 million from Kistefos AS, one of Norway’s leading privately owned investment companies.
Eleven incoming Harvard graduate students recently joined 66 other scholars from across the globe to receive scholarships from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. These graduate scholarships cover tuition, room, board, fees, and books — up to $50,000 annually — for up to six years. The scholarships are among the most generous academic awards offered in the United States.
A Chinese vice minister, a senior vice president from Fidelity Investments, and professors from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Boston College are among the incoming fellows and visiting scholars at the Kennedy School of Government’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government (M-RCBG) this fall.
The Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, located at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, recently announced its fellows for the fall. These Shorenstein Fellows will work on research projects while at the center.
Internationally renowned Canadian neuroscientist Joseph B. Martin, dean of the Harvard Faculty of Medicine, was recently named the inaugural winner of the Henry G. Friesen International Prize in Health Research.
Henry Louis Gates Jr., W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard, was inducted into the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR) on July 10 at the society’s 116th annual convention, held in Addison, Texas.
Jack Shonkoff, the former dean of the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, has been appointed professor of child health and development at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and at the Graduate School of Education (GSE).
Geophysicist Jeremy Bloxham has been named dean for the physical sciences in Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), Dean Jeremy R. Knowles announced Aug. 10.
The Kennedy School of Government has announced that Samantha Power has been named Anna Lindh Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy, the first faculty member to hold the chair honoring the longtime Swedish political and civic leader who was assassinated in 2003.
Jim Yong Kim, a former director of the World Health Organization’s HIV/AIDS unit, has been appointed director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). He will become François-Xavier Bagnoud Professor of Health and Human Rights at the School.
It has been 35 years since Derek Bok was sworn in as Harvard’s 25th president and 15 years since he left office. This July he assumed the presidency for a second time, the only person ever to do so.
Interim President Derek Bok will hold office hours for students in his Massachusetts Hall office from 3:30 to 5 p.m. on Oct. 24 and Dec. 11. Sign-up begins at 2:30…
The Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) Awards were established in 1990 to recognize outstanding service to the University through alumni activities. This year’s awards ceremony will take place during the fall HAA board of directors meeting on Oct. 12.
The Harvard Medical School Department of Social Medicine, together with the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, the Harvard School of Public Health François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, and the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, will co-host a symposium on Sept. 26 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Harvard Club, 374 Commonwealth Ave., in Boston. Admission is free.
The Jerome Lyle Rappaport Charitable Foundation announced that the Rappaport family and foundation have awarded Harvard University $12.35 million to permanently endow Harvard’s Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston.
Just as Harvard’s many classrooms, labs, and offices got settled into the relatively peaceful pace that tends to mark each summer season here on campus, an army of engineers, contractors, and workers busily moved the earth at Harvard Stadium. And made a mountain.
This year is Rembrandt’s 400th birthday, and to honor the occasion, the Busch-Reisinger Museum has put together an exhibition of nearly 50 of the great Dutch artist’s prints and drawings.
The Joint Center for Housing Studies has announced F. Bart Harvey, chairman of the board of trustees and chief executive officer of Enterprise Community Partners, as well as chairman of the board of Enterprise Community Investment, as its eighth annual John T. Dunlop Lecturer. The lecture will be held in October at the Graduate School of Design in Piper Auditorium.