Year: 2009

  • Campus & Community

    Ernest May, Harvard professor and eminent historian of international relations, dies at 80

    Ernest May, a renowned historian of international relations and foreign policy and professor of history at Harvard University, died on June 1 at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston from complications following surgery, according to his family. He was 80.

    4 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Groundbreaking professorship in LGBT studies

    Harvard has received a $1.5 million gift from the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus (HGLC) to endow the F.O. Matthiessen Visiting Professorship of Gender and Sexuality. Harvard Overseer Mitchell L. Adams ’66, M.B.A. ’69, will inform participants at the annual HGLC Commencement dinner that a campaign spanning several years has reached its goal. Named after…

    5 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    HDS grad hopes to alter military culture

    Lukas Filler likes a challenge. One of the 6-foot-5-inch former competitive swimmer’s favorite pastimes is surfing … in the New England winter … before dawn.

    4 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    358th Commencement: Harvard confers 6,777 degrees and 81 certificates

    Today the University awarded a total of 6,777 degrees and 81 certificates. A breakdown of the degrees by schools and programs follows. Harvard College granted a total of 1,562 degrees.

    2 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    O’Connor named Radcliffe Medalist

    The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University has announced that Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, will be awarded the 2009 Radcliffe Institute Medal at the annual Radcliffe Day luncheon on Friday (June 5). Barbara J. Grosz, dean of the Radcliffe Institute, will give opening remarks…

    3 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Matt Lauer anchors Class Day festivities

    Matt Lauer, co-anchor of NBC News’ “Today,” delivered the 2009 Senior Class Day speech in Tercentenary Theatre on Wednesday (June 3) under a canopy of green leaves and slightly overcast skies. With a joke-filled address that had the large crowd frequently in stitches, the accomplished journalist proved he is also an accomplished stand-up comedian.

    4 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Commencement orators talk the talk

    A journalist, a landscape architect, and a Latin scholar are today’s Commencement orators. They fulfill a University tradition dating back to 1642. They also embark on three journeys that hint at the wide array of academic paths leading outward from Harvard.

    6 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Sobering poems, more sobering oration mark PBK

    Harvard’s Phi Beta Kappa (PBK) chapter first met in 1781, two years before the end of the Revolutionary War.

    4 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    At ROTC commissioning, Faust touts idea of ‘soldier-scholar’

    Barron, Bilotti, Bras, Chiappini, Doohovskoy, Kristol, Pellegrini, West. That’s roll call for eight 2009 Harvard graduates who were commissioned late Wednesday morning (June 3). Five are new officers in the U.S. Army and three in the U.S. Marine Corps.

    4 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Faust bids farewell to 2009’s ‘improvisers’

    Harvard President Drew Faust shared final words of wisdom with the Class of 2009 Tuesday (June 2), sending them into a newly uncertain world with assurances that their liberal arts education gives them the ability to improvise in changing times.

    4 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Ten honorary degrees awarded at Commencement

    Harvard University has conferred today (June 4) honorary degrees on 10 outstanding individuals: Energy Secretary Steven Chu, filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, author Joan Didion, religious historian Wendy Doniger, legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin, immunologist Anthony S. Fauci, anthropologist Sarah Hrdy, engineer Robert Langer, musician Wynton Marsalis, and political scientist Sidney Verba.

    19 minutes
  • Health

    Shining light on leptin’s role in brain

    In investigating the complex neurocircuitry behind weight gain and glucose control, scientists have known that the hormone leptin plays a key role in the process. But within the myriad twists…

    4 minutes
  • Health

    Researchers solve ‘bloodcurdling’ mystery

    By applying cutting-edge techniques in single-molecule manipulation, researchers at Harvard University have uncovered a fundamental feedback mechanism that the body uses to regulate the clotting of blood. The finding, which…

    3 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Harvard Class Day 2009

    Journalist Matt Lauer joins student orators in a humor-filled afternoon of informal celebration.

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    Harvard to participate in Yellow Ribbon Veterans Education Program

    President Drew Faust announced a partnership with the federal government today that will help America’s military veterans obtain a Harvard education.

    1 minute
  • Health

    How growing cells move together

    Our cells are more than inert bags of proteins and genes whose complex signaling networks confound the world’s most powerful computers. They also have a physical side whose brawny feats…

    4 minutes
  • Science & Tech

    Health, life insurers hold billions in tobacco stocks

    More than a decade after Harvard Medical School researchers first revealed that life and health insurance companies were major investors in tobacco stocks – prompting calls upon them to divest…

    3 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Phi Beta Kappa 2009

    Harvard’s 358th Commencement begins: a beautiful day, a bittersweet poem, a cautionary talk, a president’s wisdom and good wishes – and hymns, prayers and farewells.

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    Faces of the Future: Harvard Class of 2009

    What do music therapy, midwifery, ballet, graphic art, physics, finance, and the study of military culture have in common? They are practiced at the highest levels of commitment and excellence by the Harvard graduates profiled here.

    1 minute
  • Science & Tech

    Invention of cooking drove evolution of the human species, new book argues

     “You are what you eat.” Can these pithy words explain the evolution of the human species? Yes, says Richard Wrangham of Harvard University, who argues in a new book that…

    3 minutes
  • Health

    Video can help patients make end-of-life decisions

    Viewing a video showing a patient with advanced dementia interacting with family and caregivers may help elderly patients plan for end-of-life care, according to a study led by Massachusetts General…

    4 minutes
  • Health

    DFCI cancer research highlights age-related treatment effectiveness, patient cost concerns

    New research from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute highlights age-related responses to colon cancer treatment and patient attitudes toward cost of drugs to manage side effects. Research presented at the American…

    5 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    This month in Harvard history

    May 13, 1958 — On the steps of Widener Library, the Harvard Glee Club and the Radcliffe Choral Society perform choruses from Bach’s B-minor Mass. Although the groups have performed together for decades, the occasion marks the Choral Society’s first participation in a Glee Club outdoor concert.

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    Police reports

    Following are some of the incidents reported to the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) for the week ending May 25. The official log is located at 1033 Massachusetts Ave., sixth floor, and is available online athttp://www.hupd.harvard.edu/.

    2 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Niall Kirkwood honored for work in landscape architecture

    Niall Kirkwood, chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture and professor of landscape architecture and technology at the Graduate School of Design (GSD) has been named a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects.

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    Beaudry and Theodore named Trudeau Scholars

    The Trudeau Foundation has recently awarded two 2009 Trudeau Scholars scholarships to doctoral candidates Jonas-Sébastien Beaudry and David Theodore. Beaudry, currently pursuing a juridical science doctorate at Harvard Law School, and Theodore, an architecture and urban planning doctoral candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, were among the 15 scholars who will each receive…

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    Judah Folkman

    Judah Folkman was born Moses Judah Folkman in 1933. The son of a rabbi, he became inspired to become a physician as a young boy when visiting ailing members of the congregation with his father. He soon became fascinated with science and medicine, and as a high school student he devised a perfusion system in…

    9 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    GSE’s Corriveau lands funding for research

    The American Psychological Foundation (APF) Board of Trustees named Kathleen Corriveau, a student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, as a 2009 APF Elizabeth Munsterberg Koppitz Fellowship recipient. The $25,000 fellowship will support Corriveau’s research during the 2009-10 academic year.

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    Five grad students named Rappaport Fellows

    Five Harvard graduate students — Meghan Haggerty, Devin Lyons-Quirk, Jessica Hohman, Antoniya Owens, and Michael Long — are among the 12 local graduate students who will spend the summer working in key state agencies as Rappaport Public Policy Fellows.

    3 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Undergrads tackle issues in practical ethics

    The Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics has announced this year’s recipients of the Lester Kissel Grants in Practical Ethics. Five Harvard College students have been awarded grants to carry out summer projects on a variety of important subjects.

    3 minutes