The ivory tower has a tenuous hold on Radcliffe Fellow Jennifer Harbury and Harvard Medical School Professor of Medical Anthropology Paul Farmer, who have traded lofty academic seclusion for messy, complicated, and dangerous work in the jungles and judicial systems of Guatemala and Haiti. At the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) Tuesday (Feb. 17), they bore witness to human rights abuses that grip those two nations in a lecture called Impunity in Latin America: Human Rights Abuses and Reconciliation in Guatemala. James Cavallaro, associate director of the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School, led a discussion after their remarks.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson called for a Freedom Summer type of effort in the coming months to register voters, heal interracial wounds, and get out the vote for what he said will be a presidential campaign of historic proportions.
Gro Harlem Brundtland, former director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), has been named Health Policy Forum Fellow at the Kennedy Schools Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy for the spring 2004 semester.
Forty years after the birth of the womens movement, women need to look at themselves, rather than at men or at society, for reasons why there arent more women heading companies, earning top dollars, or running governments.
Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge shared sometimes deeply personal insights about leadership with a Harvard Business School audience of students and faculty on Wednesday (Feb.11), saying that he has largely been driven by lessons from his father about integrity, responsibility, hard work, and the value of education.
For some time, researchers have known that people with diabetes have a greater risk of developing Alzheimers disease and other forms of dementia than those without diabetes, but the exact cause of this link has not been known. Now, a new study by researchers in Cologne, Germany, and at Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, to be published this week online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that insulin resistance in brain cells can affect how they function, causing some of the biochemical changes typically seen in Alzheimers disease.
Before feting Woman of the Year Sandra Bullock, Hasty Pudding members previewed their new show As the Word Turns, a story of love, villainy, and proper spelling. See the Hasty Pudding Theatricals Web site for details.
Anthropologist Brian Hare’s research involved New Guinea singing dogs, a subspecies that shows strong indications of domestication at some time in the past but now exists as feral, reclusive individuals…
Severely blind people have been able to temporarily see patterns of light with the help of an electric device developed by a Harvard-M.I.T. research team.
In the first large study to assess iron stores and risk of type 2 diabetes in an apparently healthy population, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) found that higher iron stores were associated with significantly elevated risk of type 2 diabetes, independent of other known diabetes risk factors. Higher iron stores were assessed by measuring blood concentrations of ferritin (a protein that stores iron in the body). The findings appear in the Feb. 11 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
Director and choreographer Martha Clarke shared her insights on flight, physicality, and intuition Monday (Feb. 9) in a conversation with New York Times senior cultural correspondent John Rockwell 62, billed as one of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studys lectures in the humanities. Clarkes production of Shakespeares Midsummer Nights Dream is currently playing at the American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.), which hosted and co-sponsored the event.
Since 1976, Timothy Springer has been trying to solve the mysteries of how white blood cells squeeze out of blood vessels and find their way to sites of infectious attacks. What he has learned has won him this years Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Crafoord Prize.
Harvard University scientists have found a mechanism by which cells repair a key type of oxidative DNA damage that, left unchecked, can lead to a greatly elevated risk of colon cancer. The findings appear in the Feb. 12 issue of the journal Nature.
Two female graduate students were victims of indecent assaults within 15 minutes of each other last Friday (Feb. 6), in and near Harvard Yard, according to Harvard University Police.
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.
A group of Harvard administrators and students met Friday (Feb. 6) with the College Safety Committee to discuss new campus safety initiatives and update them on investigations surrounding recent indecent assaults in the area.
Julian Bond, chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), joined Harvard Medical School (HMS) faculty members last Wednesday (Feb. 4) to share memories of the civil rights era with Boston youth, describing the times difficult work and telling the children that future struggles for justice will be theirs.
Caring for the Harvard Community, Harvard Universitys regular series of events focusing on contemporary mental and emotional health issues for students, faculty, and staff, returns for two weeks of workshops and discussions Feb. 23-March 5. Coordinated by Sharon Thomas in the Provosts Office, all events in the student-driven series fall within the theme A World of Well-Being: Focus on Emotional and Behavioral Health in a Community of Many Cultures, chosen from student input and feedback from last years Caring events.
The Harvard Libraries Web site – accessible directly from the Libraries button on Harvards home page – serves as an online gateway to the rich library resources of the University. In a continuing effort to enhance the information available on this valuable Web site, the University Librarys Office for Information Systems has added a new category titled Conducting Research. Links in this category unite a variety of resources that librarians across the University have developed for specific disciplines and subject areas, including Finding Materials at Harvard, general research guides, research guides by subject, guides to individual resources, and a list of Harvard libraries by subject area.
Educators at all levels are struggling to implement the landmark No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, according to the findings of a four-part study released Monday (Feb. 9) by The Civil Rights Project at Harvard. The reports look at the impact of this complex, dramatic change in federal education policy on each level of government – federal, state, and district – during the first year of implementation of the NCLB Act (2002-2003).
Far from Beanpot business as usual, it took a three-goal, third-period outburst by the No. 3 Harvard womens hockey team to put away a feisty Northeastern team, 5-1, in the championship game this past Tuesday evening (Feb. 10) at B.C.s Kelley Rink. With the win, Harvard (18-2-1 2-2-0 Ivy) grabs its sixth-straight best-in-Boston title, and 10th overall, since the womens tourney began 26 years ago. Meanwhile, in the consolation round, B.C. downed BU, 7-1.
From the proper vantage and with just a little squint of the eyes, the double-legged columns lining up to support a Memorial Hall arcade look like ballet dancers at the barre.
Researchers at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have successfully engineered a singularly heart-healthy mouse, an advance that could lead to the development of meat, milk, and eggs that are as good for your heart as fish is. With the help of a gene from the C. elegans roundworm, the researchers developed a strain of mice that converts omega-6 fatty acids – which mammals produce abundantly but which do not have great health benefits – into omega-3 fatty acids, which reduce the incidence and effects of cardiovascular disease.
Anthony Shadid, Islamic affairs correspondent for The Washington Post, has been named the 23rd Joe Alex Morris Jr. Memorial lecturer at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Shadid, who is based in the Middle East, will deliver the lecture on March 11 in the Knight Center at the Walter Lippmann House.
Scholarships for study or research in China Scholarships for one academic year of study or research in China are made possible through an agreement between the Ministry of Education of…
Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Tom Ridge talked to a Harvard Business School audience of students and faculty Wednesday (Feb. 11) about the challenges he has faced as the first head of a new federal agency. The Department of Homeland Security was put together from 22 federal departments in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Ridge, former governor of Pennsylvania, was a 1967 Harvard College honors graduate.
The proverbial village it takes to raise a child assembled itself at the Graduate School of Education (GSE) Friday (Feb. 6): Educators, social workers, policy-makers, health professionals, business leaders, parents, academics, and politicians, including the mayors of Boston and Providence, came from around the Northeast for a conference called Building Strong Community Schools.
Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of Massachusetts physicians favor single-payer national health insurance, far more than support managed care (10 percent) or fee-for-service care (26 percent), according to a Harvard Medical School study published Monday (Feb. 9) in the Archives of Internal Medicine. National health insurance (NHI) received majority support from physicians of virtually every age, gender, and medical specialty – even among surgeons a plurality supported NHI. The breadth of physician support for NHI was highlighted by the fact that most members of the American Medical Association (AMA) and the Massachusetts Medical Society favor the single-payer approach. Despite this high level of support, however, only about half (51.9 percent) of physicians studied were aware that a majority of their fellow physicians support NHI.
Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a burden to the elderly population, and its consequences are increasing because treatment options are limited. Prevention remains the best approach for decreasing the impact of this leading cause of blindness.
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