Provost Steven E. Hyman and the Chair of the University Committee on Human Rights Studies Professor John Coatsworth have announced the appointment of Stephen P. Marks as the first Senior Fellow at the University Committee on Human Rights Studies. His responsibilities will include working with the committee to expand undergraduate education opportunities in human rights, in cooperation with the associate dean of Undergraduate Academic Programs and the relevant Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) oversight committees and departments. He will also work with the staff of the University Committee to broaden opportunities for students to engage in study abroad, research, fellowships, and internships related to this field, and, he will work with the Office of International Programs and the Office of Career Services on these tasks.
In a suite of newly remodeled offices in the basement of Pierce Hall, a group of undergraduates huddles near a whiteboard besmirched with diagrams. Laptops glow. Uncompleted circuit boards lay scattered across tables like abandoned blue books. A blur of voices doesnt make the scene any less puzzling: We have something here, and we have something there, and they might be the same color … theyre of the same bot. … What hes saying is that so instead of going 0,0,0,0, you just keep a list of all the same blobs.
After three years of minimal increases in market rents (0 percent in 2003, 0.7 percent in 2004, 0.7 percent decrease in 2005), research for this year suggests a recovery is under way in the local rental market, thereby supporting an increase in Harvard residential housing rents.
Harvard lost one of its greatest teachers and quintessential biologists with the death of Claude Alvin Villee Jr. on August 7, 2003, at age 86, after a long illness with Parkinsons disease.
To meet the increased physical planning and development needs of the faculties and departments on Harvard’s existing campus while simultaneously preparing for first-phase development in Allston, the Harvard Planning + Allston Initiative (HPAI) – the team that coordinated University-wide physical planning – has been reconfigured into two University organizations.
Elliot Forbes, the Fanny Peabody Professor of Music Emeritus, died Jan. 10 at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 88. A member of an old Boston family with numerous Harvard connections, Forbes was the son of Fogg Museum Director Edward Waldo Forbes and the great-grandson of poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson.
G. (Gwynne) Blakemore Evans, Cabot Professor of English Literature Emeritus at Harvard University and this country’s most distinguished editor of Shakespeare’s plays and poems, died on Dec. 23, 2005, at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 93. His death was the result of complications that followed a recent stroke.
William Hutchison, scholar of American religious history and former co-master of Winthrop House, died of cancer on Dec. 16, 2005, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He was 75.
The Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government recently announced its group of spring fellows.
Harvard’s Institute of Politics (IOP), located at the Kennedy School of Government, has announced the selection of an experienced group of individuals for fellowships this spring. The following resident fellows will join the institute for the spring semester and will lead weekly, not-for-credit study groups on a range of political topics. Fellows interact with students, participate in the intellectual life of the community, and pursue individual studies or projects.
Harvard College senior Victoria Sprow is among the 12 national recipients of the 2006-07 George J. Mitchell Scholarship. Only the third Harvard student ever to receive the Mitchell award, Sprow will study for a master’s degree in creative writing at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland.
Six entries have been chosen as finalists for the 2006 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. The winner of the $25,000 prize will be named at an awards ceremony on March 14 at the Kennedy School.
John White, former U.S. deputy secretary of defense, has been named the Robert and Renée Belfer Lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG). White has served as a lecturer in public policy at KSG since 1998.
Each year more than 50 postdoctoral and faculty fellowships/grants are available to the Harvard medical community by invitation only. The private foundations that fund these grants permit a limited number of individuals to be nominated for these awards. (Individuals cannot apply for these directly, but must be nominated by the institution.) In order to choose candidates that will represent the Harvard medical community in the national competitions, an internal selection process is conducted by the Harvard Medical School (HMS) Faculty Fellowship Committee.
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has awarded $3 million to the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and its partners to advance their collaborative study of state-sponsored Internet filtering worldwide through the OpenNet Initiative.
The Harvard University Library (HUL) has received a grant of $600,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for the development of a registry of authoritative information about digital formats. Detailed information about the format of digital resources is fundamental to their preservation. The two-year project will result in a new Global Digital Format Registry (GDFR), which will become a key international infrastructure component for the digital preservation programs of libraries, archives, and other institutions with the responsibility for keeping digital resources viable over time.
HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES New professorship addresses energy William Hogan named first Raymond Plank Professor of Global Energy Policy at KSG A new professorship devoted to global energy policy has been created at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government (KSG) to help address the enormous challenges of meeting worldwide energy needs in a timely, secure, environmentally responsible, and economic manner.
Sarah Sewall was appointed director of the Kennedy School of Government’s (KSG) Carr Center for Human Rights Policy on Jan. 25. She began her appointment immediately and will serve through the 2006-07 academic year.
The Harvard University Art Museums (HUAM) recently announced the appointment of Susanne Ebbinghaus as the George M.A. Hanfmann Curator of Ancient Art. Ebbinghaus has been serving as a curatorial research associate in the Department of Ancient and Byzantine Art and Numismatics at Harvard University Art Museums and recently spent a year at the University of Toronto, investigating cultural exchanges between Greece and the Near East on a fellowship from the Gerda Henkel Foundation. The appointment will become official in early February.
The Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) and disease-fighting researchers across Harvard are the recipients of Jerry and Darlene Jordan’s recent $10 million gift to the University. The gift is just the latest expression of the Jordans’ generosity: Over the years, Jerry ’61, M.B.A. ’67, and Darlene Jordan have funded financial aid, athletics, and other programs at Harvard College and the Business School.Five million dollars of their gift is designated for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences to help strengthen FAS programs, as well as enrich student life at the College.
Robin Herman has been appointed assistant dean for communications at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). She has served as director of the School’s office of communications for the past six years.
Two members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) have been appointed to University Professorships. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, currently the James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History, known for her work on daily life in late 18th and early 19th century America, has been appointed the 300th Anniversary University Professor. Peter Galison, the Mallinckrodt Professor of the History of Science and of Physics, best known for his studies of 20th century microphysics, has been named the Joseph Pellegrino University Professor.
The Harvard men’s and women’s hockey teams will battle Boston University for Beantown bragging rights early next week in the opening rounds of the 54th and 26th annual Beanpot Tournaments, respectively.
The Tennis Camps at Harvard (TCH), one of the area’s most appealing summer activities for children and adults, will start its 16th season on June 12 at the Beren Tennis Center at Soldiers Field Athletic Complex.
Theda Skocpol, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS), has accepted a three-year term as a Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study senior adviser in the social sciences, effective Jan. 1.
James H. Sidanius, a psychologist best known for establishing and refining an influential theory of social dominance along lines of gender, age, race, and class, has been named professor of psychology and of African and African American Studies in Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, effective Jan. 1.
Featured series 
Gallery
