Campus & Community

When Harvard University Professors Lawrence Bobo and Michael Dawson formally debuted the new peer-reviewed journal they are co-editing, Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race last month at the Organization of American Historians meeting, the reaction was not so much Why? as What took you so long?

Joan Acocella, dance critic for the New Yorker, introduced the video as one of the most extraordinary pieces of dance footage I have ever seen.

Stem cell therapies have the potential to do for chronic diseases what antibiotics did for infectious diseases. It is going to take years of serious research to get there, but as a neurologist, I believe the prospect of a penicillin for Parkinsons is a potential breakthrough that we must pursue. As in other areas of creative endeavor in science, the answers will come only with careful experimentation.

While the new Harvard Stem Cell Institute aims to encourage scholarly examination of the ethical issues surrounding the institutes work, a Harvard committee has had a similar, but more practical, role for more than two years.

On Aug. 9, 2001, President George W. Bush changed the landscape around embryonic stem cell research.

Seven Harvard schools, seven teaching hospitals, and close to 100 researchers and scientists are banding together in an ambitious new institute with a simple goal: to use stem cells to help the 150 million people nationally living with or dying from five types of organ and tissue failure.

Seven Harvard schools, seven Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals, and close to 100 researchers and scientists are banding together in an ambitious new institute with a simple goal: to explore the promising area of stem cell research.

At DNAs mysterious command, an embryonic stem cell can somehow become heart, lung, liver, bone, hair, skin, nail, or any other tissue in the body.

Harvard Stem Cell Institute, home page to be launched in late spring

Stem cells are the fundamental source of all the bodys tissues, the template from which bodily cells are derived. As cells die off or are damaged, the hundreds of thousands of stem cells in the human body give rise – constantly – to new tissue. Injuries as simple as the scalding of the mouth with a hot beverage and as grave as the compromising of the immune system during chemotherapy require the activity of stem cells to repair cellular damage.

In studying the worlds environment, Harvard is changing its own environment.

The reigning league champion Harvard mens tennis team inched closer to a repeat performance this past Saturday (April 17) with a not-so-slight 7-0 shutout of visiting Penn. Still perfect in league play, the Crimson (18-6, 4-0 Ivy) – who also downed Princeton, 5-2, a day earlier – next face Brown, also 18-6, 4-0 Ivy, this Friday (April 23) in Providence in a match-up that will likely have title implications.

Edward Elwyn Jones, currently acting University organist and choirmaster, has been appointed the seventh Gund University Organist and Choirmaster. The Rev. Professor Peter J. Gomes, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church, announced Jones appointment at the Easter morning service.

Last Friday evenings (April 16) presentation at Harvard Divinity School by the Rev. Dr. Mel White, the former dean of the largest gay and lesbian church in the world (the Dallas Cathedral of Hope), was billed as a lecture on Religion, Homosexuality and Marriage: Why We Cant Wait. But it was really a rallying cry.

Current thinking on how most communicable respiratory infections are spread – by large droplets over short distances or by coming in contact with contaminated surfaces (face-to-face) – needs to be reconsidered, according to Donald Milton, lecturer on occupational and environmental health at the Harvard School of Public Health and co-author of a perspective in the April 22 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. The perspective coincides with the report by Yu et al. in this issue on airborne transmission of SARS.

The children who inhabit the world of award-winning author, educator, and activist Jonathan Kozol 58 dont wear designer clothing, dont have parents who drive around in SUVs, and dont vacation at Disney World. They live in extreme poverty in the inner cities in places like New York and Los Angeles and often endure chronic asthma, hunger, and homelessness as a way of life. For 40 years, Kozol has worked with these poor children, their parents, preachers, teachers, and principals – and spoken out against the inequities of this countrys public school systems.

A bunch of leeks, an alarm clock, a nylon rope, a banana, three playing cards, an ice skate – what does that suggest to you, Dr. Watson?

1 educational Web site to be launched in late spring

Stem cell therapies have the potential to do for chronic diseases what antibiotics did for infectious diseases. It is going to take years of serious research to get there, but as a neurologist, I believe the prospect of a penicillin for Parkinsons is a potential breakthrough that we must pursue. As in other areas of creative endeavor in science, the answers will come only with careful experimentation.

Rakesh Jain looks at tumors from an engineers perspective. The view he gets has led to some startling results.

Kofi Annan, the secretary-general of the United Nations and 2001 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, will be Harvards 2004 Commencement speaker at the Afternoon Exercises on June 10.

At its 11th meeting of the year (April 14) the Faculty Council discussed with Dean of the College Benedict Gross (mathematics) and Professor Jennifer Leaning (faculty of public health) the implementation of the recommendations made last year by the Committee to Address Sexual Assault at Harvard (the Leaning Committee). Dean Julia Fox (Harvard College) and Susan Marine (director of the Office of Sexual Assault Prevention and Response) were present for this conversation.

April 4, 1907 – Nathan Marsh Pusey, Harvard’s future 24th President, is born in Council Bluffs, Iowa. April 15, 1912 – The luxury liner “Titanic” sinks in the North Atlantic.…

Flags adorning the parking lot at O¹Donnell Field, where the Crimson baseballers play, ensure that no visitors think theyre in New Haven.

Following are some of the incidents reported to the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) for the week ending April 10. The official log is located at 1033 Massachusetts Ave., sixth floor.

President Lawrence H. Summers will hold office hours for students in his Massachusetts Hall office on the following dates:

Marking the 50th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision that desegregated Americas schools, Harvard Law School (HLS) turned its attention Tuesday night (April 13) to Justice of the United States Thurgood Marshall, who as legal director for the NAACP successfully argued the Brown case. Yet with a panel of eight HLS faculty members who clerked for Marshall, the event painted a far richer portrait of the civil rights leader than is well known. The panelists shaded his august jurisprudential legacy with personal recollections of Marshall as a boss and mentor who told salty stories, gambled with passion, and called his clerks knuckleheads.

Two music department faculty honored G. Gordon Watts Professor of Music Kay Kaufman Shelemay was elected fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research. The academy represents the oldest organization…

Defender Belitsos earns league accolades For her recent efforts against the attack, sophomore midfielder Elaine Belitsos of the Harvard women’s lacrosse team was named the Ivy League’s Defensive Player of…

National interfaith leader and best-selling author the Rev. Mel White will address the conflict between religious and gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender (GLBT) communities at three events this weekend (April 16-18) at Harvard. White is the founder of SoulForce Inc., an interfaith movement committed to ending spiritual violence against GLBT people.