Campus & Community

Louis DeFeo, manager of the scientific instrument shop at the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, is reflected in a glass facade of the Maxwell Dworkin building on campus.

Quagmires come in all shapes and sizes. Russias version is a small, predominantly Muslim province in the northern Caucasus called Chechnya.

Larry Kramer, writer and AIDS activist, doesnt believe leadership can be taught. We really made it up every day as we went along, he said of his years with ACT UP, the international AIDS advocacy and protest organization he founded. If I were to teach anything here it would be how to confront the system, not work within it. Hit it over the head with a bat and take no prisoners.

This fall the Harvard University Art Museums (HUAM) will return with a third year of the successful Sackler Saturdays program. Families with children ages 6 to 11 are invited to explore artworks from ancient cultures and distant lands such as China, Japan, Korea, India, Greece, and Rome. The program, which is free and open to the public, takes place in the Arthur M. Sackler Museum. The first event – A Big Dig: Finding Out About Buried Treasures in the Sackler Museum – will be held Oct. 18.

The Harvard Theatre Collections exhibition The Kings Theatre: Ballet and Italian Opera in London, 1706-1883, tells the stories behind the performances, and performers, of the Kings Theatre in London. Librettos, printed scores, manuscripts, playbills, and etchings illustrate how the theaters ballets and operas influenced the cultural life of the city and affected music publishing in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The Office for the Arts (OFA) has announced that more than 700 students will participate in over 20 projects in dance, music, theater, and multidisciplinary genres at the University this fall. Sponsored in part through funding from OFA, the grants aim to foster creative and innovative artistic initiatives among Harvard undergraduates.

For generations, literature has been pressed into the service of teaching values. Whether the overtly religious themes of the Bible, Dick and Janes two-parent suburban values, or the moral exhortations of William Bennetts The Book of Virtues, lessons often prove loftier than simply vocabulary and grammar.

Lawrence D. Bobo, acting director of Harvards W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research, has announced the appointment of 14 new fellows for the 2003-04 academic year.

Last year, fewer than 6,200 people in the United States donated organs though more than 80,000 waited for organ transplantations. Each day, an average of 17 people die while waiting for a transplant.

Bonnie Solomon, a photographer who worked at Harvard for more than four decades making slides of artworks for students and professors, died at her home in Cambridge Sept. 8 after a brief struggle with cancer. She was 72.

Eighteen new fellows and senior fellows have joined the Center for Business and Government (CBG) at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG). CBG fellows are selected as a result of their demonstrated leadership in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors, or because of their scholarship concerning the interface of business and government.

The Office for the Arts (OFA) is now accepting spring project grant applications through Oct. 8. Grants are available to Harvard undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and staff for original work, or work showing an original, creative approach to artistic traditions. Apply online at www.fas.harvard.edu/~ofa. For more information, contact Stephanie Troisi, program associate, at troisi@fas.harvard.edu.

A sudden downpour, a flash flood, and a Yard full of freshmen conspired to bring shy, disconnected students together better than any orientation session could. On the afternoon of Sept. 23, the skies above Cambridge opened up, and in a few minutes created a mud puddle that could call out the inner child in an octagenarian. Harvard first-years tumbled into the mood and the puddle without a moments hesitation, spraying the afternoon with splash fights, football games, and spontaneous mud wrestling. By the time it was over, the bonding and the laundering had begun.

Kevin Kit Parker’s 9 mm pistol lay on the table next to the laptop as he typed. He was stripped to the waist in the 130-degree heat, sweating and writing while he waited for a flight home from Afghanistan.

Harvard alum C. Weldon Jones, a former teaching fellow in biology (1976-1980) and a visiting scholar (1988-89) at the University, passed away on Sept. 21. He was 50.

A high-level group of academic leaders and policy-makers from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh met with U.S. academics at Harvard recently for a conference delving into South Asias most intractable problems. The conference kicked off a new initiative to expand South Asian studies, as Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean William C. Kirby re-evaluates the undergraduate curriculum and works in concert with President Lawrence H. Summers to enhance global studies.

On a visit to the University, Foreign Minister of India Yashwant Sinha (right) shakes hands with President Lawrence H. Summers in Harvard Yard.

Law School Professor Mary Ann Glendon, an expert on family and human rights law, was one of four winners of the first Bradley Prize, a new $250,000 award given for achievements that promote liberal democracy, democratic capitalism and the vigorous defense of American institutions.

Eleven scientists from The Forsyth Institute who volunteered their time to mentor students from the Boston Public Schools (BPS) all summer saw the fruits of their work early last month (Sept. 10). Thats when the students, many of whom have won city, state, and international science fair competitions, gave formal presentations to an audience of scientists and invited guests. The Forsyth Institute is affiliated with both the Harvard School of Dental Medicine and the Medical School.

Neighbors from near and far enjoyed Harvards six museums for free Sunday (Sept. 28) during the Universitys first-ever Museums Community Day. The Fogg, Busch-Reisinger, and Sackler art museums and the Harvard Museum of Natural History, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, and Semitic Museum welcomed over a thousand new friends and old with special events and free three-month memberships.

The 2004 presidential contest is heating up, with recent polls showing President Bush increasingly vulnerable, but with a Democratic presidential field so far lacking a strong enough candidate to boot him from the job, ABC News political director told a Kennedy School audience last week (Sept. 25).

Harvards Program on U.S.-Japan Relations has recently selected 16 fellows for the 2003-04 academic year. Founded in 1980, the program enables outstanding scholars and practitioners to come together to conduct independent research and participate in an ongoing dialogue with other members of the Harvard and Greater Boston communities.

Harvard University is one of the nations 100 best places to work if youre a mom, Working Mother magazine announced Sept. 23 in its annual 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers issue. It is the only university on the 2003 list and just the third university honored in the 18-year history of the 100 Best Companies list.

Sept. 25, 2003 For decades, disparities among the calendars of Harvard’s faculties and Schools have made it more difficult than it should be for students in one School to cross-register…

Sept. 1, 1922 – The Divinity School and the Andover Theological Seminary formally begin a closer affiliation under a new agreement approved in the spring. Sept. 28, 1925 – In…

Following are some of the incidents reported to the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) for the week ending Sept. 20. The official log is located at 1033 Massachusetts Ave., sixth floor.

A memorial service for John Shearman, Adams University Professor Emeritus, will be held Nov. 3 at 11 a.m. at the Memorial Church.

In a national landscape of increasingly sparse clubs, leagues, and societies, Americans are still coming together, fighting for a cause, a job, or an education through hands-on, face-to-face organizations that are hopeful exmples that, if followed, could help reweave the fabric of American society.

The title of the Institute of Politics Sept. 23 forum discussion Will the Korean Nuclear Crisis Lead to War? promised to throw light on a subject that has kept much of the world in a state of anxiety ever since it was revealed in October 2002 that North Korea had resumed its nuclear weapons program in violation of a 1994 agreement.

James Coveney has been riding motorcycles