Featured series 
Year: 2009
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Arts & Culture
Dance, music, literature celebrate human rights
Human rights are all about history, politics, and the law — right? Not entirely. The arts have a role to play. Literature, music, dance, and other forms of creative expression often convey oblique stories of injustice and trauma. They also inspire humans to embrace the human rights implicit in every act of creation.
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Campus & Community
Faculty Council
At its seventh meeting of the year on Feb. 18, the Faculty Council discussed international centers and continued its discussion of the finances of the Faculty.
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Campus & Community
Stasa of Planning Office, 85
Josef Stasa, who worked as an urbanist for the Harvard University Planning Office for more than 25 years, passed away on Feb. 17 in Cambridge at the age of 85.
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Campus & Community
Flu continues, shots do too
With influenza activity in the Boston area continuing to increase, the Harvard community is reminded that free flu vaccines are still available to all Harvard faculty and staff through Harvard University Health Services (HUHS).
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Campus & Community
Pick up new Harvard IDs at Holyoke Center
Harvard has a new, high-technology ID card, and those who have not yet picked up their card should do so at the final card swap event, March 5 and 6, at the Holyoke Information Center, 1350 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, Mass.
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Arts & Culture
Community lecture series debuts at Allston Education Portal
The Harvard Allston Education Portal buzzed with activity on Tuesday night (March 3) as Robert Lue, professor of the practice of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard, gave the first in a series of faculty lectures for the community. His talk, titled “Using Science to Understand the World and Ourselves,” covered the importance of science…
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Science & Tech
Vivid images, stern warnings mark Ice Age ‘rock’ star’s talk
Oohs and ahhs greeted slide after slide as English author and freelance scholar Paul G. Bahn presented “The Shock of the Old: New Discoveries in Ice Age Art” at the Yenching Institute Feb 26.
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Health
Congressmen highlight challenges of mental illness, substance abuse
In 2008, 54 million Americans suffered with mental illness; 35,000 Americans committed suicide due to untreated depression; and 180,000 people died as a direct result of an untreated addiction. Congressmen Jim Ramstad (R-Minn.) and Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) spoke at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum Monday (March 2) on the truths and realities of mental…
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Health
Runyon Foundation names fellows from Harvard
The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation has named six Harvard affiliates among its 13 new fellows. The recipients of this prestigious, three-year award are outstanding postdoctoral scientists conducting basic and translational cancer research in the laboratories of leading senior investigators across the country.
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Science & Tech
The key to energy independence: Go fly a kite!
Earlier this year, Big Coal got its say in “The Future of Energy” lecture series sponsored by the Harvard University Center for the Environment. Now it’s time to hear from Big Wind.
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Health
Watching evolution in real time
In 1831, the young Charles Darwin set off on the H.M.S. Beagle, a Royal Navy sloop bound for detailed surveys of South America. He took with him the first volume of the massive trilogy “Principles of Geology” by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell. (He had the other volumes sent later.)
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Health
Capillary formation’s mechanical determinants
Harvard researchers have established a link between the growth of blood vessels and the mechanical stresses caused by the environment within which the vessels grow, a new understanding that researchers hope can lead to novel disease treatments based on manipulating blood flow to living tissues.
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Campus & Community
Harvard astronomer Charbonneau honored with Waterman Award
David Charbonneau, the 34-year-old Thomas D. Cabot Associate Professor of Astronomy, has been named the recipient of the National Science Foundation’s 2009 Alan T. Waterman Award, and will receive $500,000 over a three-year period for scientific research or advanced study in his field.
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Campus & Community
Child-care programs, aid to continue at Harvard
Harvard University will continue a number of programs designed to help meet specific child care needs at the University. In 2006, the Task Force on Women Faculty and the Task Force on Women in Science and Engineering issued a final report that pointed to the need for increased University support for child care. Subsequently, several…
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Arts & Culture
When gentrification occurs in City of the Seven Hills
History and modernity collide in Monti, a neighborhood in Rome, and the local way of life is falling victim to the impact. Michael Herzfeld, professor of anthropology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, explores the changing landscape of this ancient neighborhood in a new ethnography about this district within Italy’s capital city.
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Arts & Culture
A tale of two presidents
If you had walked into the Adams House dining room on Saturday afternoon (Feb. 28), you might have thought you’d stumbled upon a Harvard Business School management lecture on good leadership qualities. You would have been mistaken. The speaker was Pulitzer Prize-winning author and presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, and she was discussing the management…
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Nation & World
U.K. anti-poverty strategy working, almost
In May 1997, Britain’s Labor Party won an election that ended nearly two decades of Conservative Party rule. The new liberal government, promising radical reform, took over a booming economy. But it also inherited an increase in poverty that had been rising steeply since the 1970s.
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Campus & Community
House Renewal Survey highlights ‘community of friends’
A survey of Harvard undergraduates reveals a House system that, despite the need for renovations, meets student expectations well and, for most, serves as a space to be with a “smaller community of friends.”
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Campus & Community
Strengthening the House tradition
A draft report on the House Renewal Program highlights a residential system that has in many ways worked as planned as it has aged, providing not just a roof over students’ heads, but fostering a supportive community that frames students’ years at Harvard and inspires House loyalty for decades after graduation.
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Campus & Community
This month in Harvard history
March 1, 1775 — Tory students casually bring India tea into Harvard Hall and nearly come to blows with others still boiling over the tea tax. In the interest of “harmony, mutual affection, and confidence, so well becoming Members of the same Society,” the faculty passes a resolution advising students “not to carry [Tea] in…
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Campus & Community
Police reports
Following are some of the incidents reported to the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) for the week ending March 2. The official log is located at 1033 Massachusetts Ave., sixth floor, and is available online at http://www.hupd.harvard.edu/.
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Campus & Community
Crimson shut out Cornell twice; Will play in ECAC semifinal
In their two ECAC quarterfinal matchups against Cornell at Bright Hockey Center, the Crimson women’s hockey team shut down the Cornell Big Red 3-0 on Friday (Feb. 27) and 4-0 on Saturday (Feb. 28) to advance to the semifinal round where Harvard will play Rensselaer at home Saturday (March 7) at 1 p.m.
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Campus & Community
Women’s hoops down Columbia, Cornell to keep Ivy title in reach
The Crimson continue to inch closer to their third consecutive Ivy championship after the women’s basketball team traveled to New York this past weekend and defeated Columbia on Friday (Feb. 27), 71-58, and Cornell on Saturday (Feb. 28), 63-56.
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Campus & Community
Women’s swimming finishes first in IVY and ECAC Championships
The No. 25 Harvard women’s swimming and diving team swam and dove like champions this past weekend despite having to split up the team to compete in two different competitions. The swimmers placed first out of eight teams at the 2009 Ivy League Championships meet (Feb. 26-28) at the Nassau County Aquatic Center in East…
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Campus & Community
Counteracting stress at work
Herbert Benson, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director emeritus of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine, will deliver a lecture, “Counteracting stress at Harvard: The relaxation response,” in which he will discuss the harmful effects of stress, lead the audience through his Relaxation Response strategy, and explain how stress can…
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Arts & Culture
A call for student artwork
The Harvard Art Show, a new student organization, is now accepting submissions of original student artwork to be exhibited, shared, and sold to the Harvard community and greater Boston area. The show, produced by Harvard students and made possible with support from the Office for the Arts at Harvard, will be held May 4, 2009,…
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Campus & Community
Gazette reaches out with e-mail blast linking to survey
In an attempt to gauge how well the Harvard Gazette addresses the needs, tastes, and desires of its readers, the paper is conducting its first ever readership survey, which ends March 6. Among other things, the Gazette wants to know more about the demographics of its readership, their interests, and their preferences — what they…
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Nation & World
HMS, HSPH Professor Kim named Dartmouth president
Jim Yong Kim, tireless advocate for bringing Western standards of health care to the world’s poor and a professor of medicine and of public health at Harvard, has been named the 17th president of Dartmouth College.
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Nation & World
Carter nominated to Pentagon post
President Barack Obama announced March 2 that he has nominated Ashton B. Carter to serve as undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics. Carter’s nomination was announced in a press release along with several other key nominees.
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Campus & Community
CYNTHIA FRIEND RECEIVES OLAH AWARD
Harvard Professor Cynthia M. Friend, the Theodore William Richards Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Materials Science, is the 2009 recipient of the George A. Olah Award in Hydrocarbon or Petroleum Chemistry by the American Chemical Society.