With more than 150,000 dead and countless more injured, severely traumatized, and homeless, Decembers tsunami disaster is shaping up to be the greatest natural catastrophe in living memory. Even those familiar with the worst wartime destruction say that they have never seen anything comparable to the coastal cities and towns utterly flattened by the massive waves.
Almost as soon as it happened, Western leaders forgot the lesson of the Soviet Unions fall: that freedom, democracy, and human rights go hand in hand with security, according to former Soviet dissident and current minister in the Israeli government Natan Sharansky.
Ernst Mayr, the Harvard University evolutionary biologist who has been called the Darwin of the 20th century, died on Feb. 3 at a retirement community in Bedford, Mass. A member of the Harvard faculty for more than half a century, he was 100.
Recent public discussion about women and science has brought renewed attention to long-standing issues concerning the representation of women in the faculty ranks at Harvard and in other top research universities. In response, Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers has announced the establishment of two University-wide task forces to develop concrete proposals to reduce barriers to the advancement of women faculty at Harvard and in academic careers more broadly.
The Harvard University community has donated $553,132 to 26 nonprofit organizations supporting relief efforts related to the Dec. 26 tsunami in South Asia. Through a program established by Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers last month, the University matched up to $100 of donations from 3,359 faculty, staff and students. Individual contributions totaled $307,255 the University matched $245,877 of those donations.
At its seventh meeting of the year (Feb. 9) the Faculty Council discussed with Dean Benedict Gross (Harvard College and mathematics) a proposed requirement that all spring term evaluations for the Committee on Undergraduate Educations Course Evaluation Guide be submitted online. David Heitmeyer, manager of Web and Applications Development, and David Sobel, senior manager of Client and Web Services, demonstrated the evaluation procedure, and Dean Stephanie Kenen and Ms. Deborah Green, both from the Office of Academic Programs were also present to answer questions. Deans Kirby and Gross discussed the spring term schedule for the Harvard College Curricular Review, and Professors Stuart Shieber (Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences) and Everett Mendelsohn (History of Science) introduced discussions of the length, frequency, and conduct of Faculty Meetings.
Feb. 10 – Woman of the Year Please note: The parade has been cancelled due to inclement weather. See http://www.hastypudding.org/new/ for details. 3:30 p.m. – Roast and presentation of Pudding…
February 1943 – With an eye toward the postwar world, the Business School launches a research project on the role of local radio advertising in the marketing of peacetime products…
Following are some of the incidents reported to the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) for the week ending Feb. 7. The official log is located at 1033 Massachusetts Ave., sixth floor.
It’s the first descriptive word on David Rodowick’s Harvard Web page, coming immediately after his name and before “Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies.”
Stavins appointed chair of new EOEA advisory board Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government Robert Stavins has been appointed chair of the newly created scientific advisory board at the…
IOP funding for thesis research The Institute of Politics (IOP) is offering awards to Harvard undergraduates for summer research and fieldwork relating directly to a senior thesis or a comparable…
For the Harvard University men’s hockey team, this past Monday’s (Feb. 7) 81-minute-double-overtime-marathon-on-ice against Northeastern ended awfully abruptly. With the game tied at 1, just minutes into the second extra-frame,…
Women pucksters burn Huskies, 9-1, in Beanpot semis The No. 5 Harvard women’s hockey team avenged their male counterparts’ recent OT loss against Northeastern with a 9-1 blowout of the…
Biorn Maybury-Lewis made his first trip to Latin America when he was only an infant. Brazilian Air Force pilots left him and his anthropologist parents in the middle of the central highlands of Brazils vast interior, quickly taking off in their small aircraft before the local Brazilian indigenous people – the Shavante – showed up. The baby, carried on his mothers hips in an Indian-style sling, probably didnt dream that this trip might eventually lead him to his new job as executive director of Harvards David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS).
Harvards Joint Center for Housing Studies and the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corp. are offering a competitive summer fellowship opportunity for forward-thinking Harvard students in law, business, planning, and public administration/policy. Blending academics and field experience, the 2005 Emerging Leaders in Community and Economic Development Fellowship program is open to University students in the fields of study mentioned above who are not in their graduating year.
The Executive Committee for Harvards Library Digital Initiative (LDI) has scheduled two University-wide calls for grant proposals for digitization projects in direct support of teaching and research through the LDI Internal Challenge Grant Program.
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who excited the ire of many with his decision to marry gay couples contrary to state law, told an audience at the Kennedy School Forum Tuesday night (Feb. 8) that he remains committed to marriage equality.
Indias ambassador to the United States hailed a growing partnership between the two nations Tuesday (Feb. 8), saying the diversity of their populations and strength of their democracies align the two countries interests.
Using a new computer model of galaxy formation, researchers have shown that growing black holes release a blast of energy that fundamentally regulates galaxy evolution and black hole growth itself. The model explains for the first time observed phenomena, and promises to deliver deeper insights into our understanding of galaxy formation and the role of black holes throughout cosmic history.
Grover, the furry blue monster of Sesame Street fame, held a press conference at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) Tuesday (Feb. 8) to announce the Harvard School of Grover, a new school of all the major majors, including not only law, medicine, and business but also hotel and restaurant management and air conditioning and refrigeration repair.
Despite – and because of – their very different approaches, policy-makers and education specialists from UNESCO, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) convened on Saturday (Feb. 5) at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) to discuss how to facilitate better interagency cooperation. They were joined by activists from several grassroots organizations. The conference, which was also concerned with evaluating and even challenging existing notions of development, was put together by Voices for Africa, a student organization at the HGSE.
For Charles Busch, author of The Tale of the Allergists Wife, the dark side of having a play on Broadway was that people would come up to him and ask how it felt to finally become mainstream.
The choir loft, or cantoria, in the Sistine Chapel is a smallish, 8-foot-by-12-foot nook carved into the stone of the chapel wall and dimly illuminated through its original colored glass window. For the first three and a half centuries of the chapels history (it was built in the 1470s), only singers were allowed to enter the cantoria. One of the things they did in there, aside from music, has only recently come to light: Signatures, hundreds of them, were uncovered during the Vaticans restoration – among them, the only extant signature of the turn-of-the-16th-century composer Josquin. Carved and scratched over several centuries of singing, the signatures now stand as a whos who of the papal choir.
Featured series 
