Nation & World

All Nation & World

  • The rise, ruin of China trader

    An exhibit and companion website developed by Harvard Business School’s Baker Library shines light on the early days of trade between China and the United States.

  • Considering gun violence

    Panelists at the Harvard School of Public Health urged both regulatory and cultural changes in how America handles guns, saying change will only come if people speak out and urging a shift in how society views guns in the home.

  • EdX expansion set for spring

    EdX, the online learning initiative founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, announced its spring course and module offerings, including four at Harvard.

  • Gun violence in America

    The mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School should galvanize Americans to view gun violence as a public health crisis, says David Hemenway, professor of health policy and author of “Private Guns, Public Health.”

  • Sir Alex leads the way

    The manager of iconic Manchester United, the recent topic of a Harvard Business School case that examined his famous career and the keys to his effective brand of leadership, visited Harvard this fall to engage with HBS students in the classroom.

  • Getting down to business

    Advancing America’s economic competitiveness should be a top priority for elected leaders, Harvard Business School professors Michael E. Porter and Jan W. Rivkin told a group of new members of Congress attending a weeklong Harvard Kennedy School crash course on the policy issues they’ll face in Washington.

  • Holmes’ suite home

    In a pioneering first, the Harvard Law School Library has used its eight collections on celebrated jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. to aggregate a hyperaccessible digital “suite” that scholars and the public can search, browse, and tag.

  • Justice by committee

    A research team made up of current and former Harvard students played a key role in the British trial centered on government atrocities during Kenya’s Mau Mau insurrection, lending support to an October court ruling that clears the way for the case to go to trial.

  • Remember research, Faust urges

    During Washington visit, Harvard President Drew Faust tells business, policy, and diplomatic leaders that they should maintain a strong research partnership between the federal government and higher educational institutions.

  • How to build a nation

    While the structures of state can be created by outsiders, national identities can only be created from within, and they commonly arise through shared language, culture, history, and ideals, political theorist Francis Fukuyama says.

  • 30 million footsteps

    Journalist Paul Salopek next year plans to begin a seven-year, 22,000-mile trip to follow the path of the first massive human migration around the world. He plans to begin in the Great Rift Valley in Ethiopia and finish in Patagonia.

  • Egypt’s revolution: A work in progress

    Despite increasing dissatisfaction with the progress of political reforms, an Egypt expert said Monday that the nation’s revolution, which began during the Arab Spring uprisings, is still just beginning.

  • A fall snapshot of Arab Spring

    Short on certainties, a Harvard panel convenes nearly two years after the start of the Arab Spring to offer perspectives on the past, present, and future.

  • Chile-Harvard partnership strong

    Harvard marked its 10-year relationship with Chile with a two-day seminar examining the nation’s future.

  • Digital society from the bottom up

    Kicking off the first in a three-part lecture series sponsored by the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, “Exclusions and Inequality in Digital Societies: Theories, Evidence, and Strategy,” Ernest J. Wilson III, examined what the transition to a digital society means for “those at the bottom.”

  • A Q&A on economic outlook

    A discussion with Harvard Professor Kenneth Rogoff on the nation’s prospects for a stronger fiscal future.

  • Truth, values, in a reviving America

    With a bitter national election fading in the rearview mirror, Harvard scholars look ahead and strike an optimistic chord, suggesting the nation can meet the many serious challenges facing it.

  • Souter, back on the bench

    Retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter dusted off his robes to preside over this year’s Ames Moot Court Competition finals, where two teams of Harvard Law School students went head-to-head on the constitutionality of “Buy American” laws.

  • When ZIP code isn’t destiny

    Author and educator Doug Lemov told a packed audience Thursday in the Harvard Graduate School of Education that specific, concrete techniques, readily learned, can help to transform good teachers into great ones.

  • Beyond mourning

    Former Radcliffe fellow and Mexican-born journalist Alma Guillermoprieto founded an online altar to honor 72 Central Americans massacred in Mexico in summer 2010.

  • Law and disorder on the reservation

    Tribal judges, policymakers, and scholars made the trip to Harvard Law School for a conference examining crime and punishment among Native Americans.

  • A nudge toward better outcomes

    On Nov. 7, fresh from spending election night in Chicago, Cass Sunstein, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, gave an audience there a peek at how the Obama administration has applied behavioral economics to regulatory decisions.

  • Room for improvement in ed policy

    In a discussion at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, a panel of education experts examined how the election results will impact education reform at the federal, state, and local levels.

  • The lessons of election ’12

    Two political philosophers from opposite sides of the fence met at the Tsai Center to size up the factors in play during the recent presidential election, and the weight that they could take on in 2016.

  • What history gives the present

    Eight Harvard historians gathered at Emerson Hall with an ambitious goal in mind: to explain — in eight minutes or less — apiece — that “everything is history and history is everything.”

  • Harvard goes to Washington

    Tuesday night’s national elections sent a number of Harvard alumni and affiliates off to Washington.

  • Architects in supermarkets

    The session “Paper or Plastic: Re-Inventing Shelf Life in the Supermarket Landscape” looked at how architects — with their skills in three-dimensional conceptualization — can address a host of design challenges, including ones that might sit on shelves in the local supermarket.

  • Bypassing the Bible

    Ellery Schempp, one of the last living symbols of a series of Supreme Court cases that banned mandatory displays of faith in public schools, brought the contentious battle over religious expression to life for a Harvard Divinity School audience.

  • Election reflection by Dukakis

    In a wide-ranging talk at Harvard, Michael Dukakis, the 1988 Democratic candidate for president, discussed the 2012 presidential election and the challenges facing the nation.

  • Peer pressure in politics

    Many people believe that idealism motivates them to open their wallets for a favorite candidate or that civic duty motivates them to vote. But don’t discount peer pressure as a factor in elections, a political scientist says.