Year: 2013

  • Campus & Community

    Murnane named acting GSE dean

    Richard J. Murnane, the Juliana W. and William Foss Thompson Professor of Education and Society at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), will serve as acting dean of the HGSE, President Drew Faust announced May 9.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Sense where none seems possible

    Five panelists at Harvard Divinity School — including Dean David N. Hempton — grappled with the ways religion is sometimes used to justify acts of terror, covering as well the role of faith traditions in encouraging healing.

    5 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Senior talks offer last word

    One senior from each of Harvard’s Houses will speak during Morning Prayers as part of “Senior Talks.” The May 9 speaker is Fred-Ivo Baca of Leverett House, with the series concluding on May 16 with Cassandra Thomson of Winthrop House.

    3 minutes
  • Science & Tech

    The nearness of you

    In research described earlier this year in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Elinor Amit, a College Fellow in psychology, along with two collaborators, Cheryl Wakslak and Yaacov Trope, showed that people increasingly prefer to communicate verbally (versus visually) with people who are distant (versus close) — socially, geographically, or temporally.

    4 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Harvard yield hits 82 percent

    Eighty-two percent of students admitted to the Class of 2017 plan to enroll at Harvard this August. This is the highest yield since the Class of 1973 entered approximately two generations ago. The yield for the Class of 2016 was 80.2 percent.

    6 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Soledad O’Brien Class Day speaker

    Soledad O’Brien, a CNN special correspondent, will speak to graduating seniors on Senior Class Day, held in Tercentenary Theatre.

    2 minutes
  • Arts & Culture

    ‘Forever free,’ with caveats

    Scholars gathered at Harvard to discuss the Emancipation Proclamation and African-American service during the Civil War.

    7 minutes
  • Health

    Lower health care costs may last

    A slowdown in the growth of U.S. health care costs could mean a savings of as much as $770 billion on Medicare spending over the next decade, Harvard economists say.

    4 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Radcliffe opens doors of discovery

    The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study announced 49 artists and scholars who have been selected as its 2013-2014 fellows, among them are 15 Harvard faculty.

    5 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Q&A with David Barron

    Harvard Law School’s David Barron will lead a task force that will develop a set of recommendations regarding Harvard’s email privacy policy.

    9 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Email policy task force members

    The members of the email policy task force, which David Barron, Harvard Law School’s Honorable S. William Green Professor of Public Law, will chair.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Steps against poverty

    Delivering the Asia Center’s annual Tsai Lecture, the World Bank Group’s president, Jim Yong Kim, described the bank’s bold push to end world poverty.

    3 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Pop trailblazer PSY at Harvard

    Korean pop trailblazer PSY will speak at Harvard on May 9. A live stream of the event will be available online at harvard.edu/live-stream.

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    Cambridge, Harvard, and MIT sign compact

    The city of Cambridge, Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have signed a “Community Compact for a Sustainable Future,” aimed at leveraging the intellectual and entrepreneurial capacity of the public-private sectors in Cambridge to build a healthy, livable, and sustainable future.

    4 minutes
  • Arts & Culture

    Citizens United and beyond

    In this year’s Tanner Lectures, Yale Law School Dean Robert C. Post suggested common constitutional ground in the campaign finance reform debate.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Holistically Crimson

    Shaw Chen, treasurer of the Harvard Club of Shanghai, learned a lot from the College’s East Asian studies classes, but got plenty of experience outside the classroom as well.

    6 minutes
  • Science & Tech

    How to protect cyclists

    Four Harvard School of Public Health students presented recommendations to the Boston City Council on how to make Boston a safer city for cyclists.

    6 minutes
  • Science & Tech

    Building with an eye on the sky

    Real estate developer Jonathan Rose highlighted recent progress in incorporating green features into affordable housing projects, saying America’s cities provide an energetic counterpoint to the stagnation in Washington, D.C.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Subversive education

    Noam Chomsky on Wednesday joined Bruno della Chiesa, a visiting lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, in an Askwith Forum covering the legacy of the radical Brazilian educator Paulo Freire (1921-1997) and his 1968 book, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.?????

    3 minutes
  • Arts & Culture

    Oh, the humanities!

    Humanities programs are in trouble in universities across the world — but hope prevails.

    6 minutes
  • Science & Tech

    Projectile learning

    Students in Matthew Liebmann’s “Encountering the Conquistadors” class recently got a feel for prehistoric life, trying their hands at an ancient weapon called the atlatl.

    2 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    The tools of art

    Inspired by creative solutions that evolved in Colombia and Argentina, Harvard Professor Doris Sommer showed her Ed Portal audience how the arts could transform the ways in which a developing society perceived itself and the values inherent in its culture and community.

    6 minutes
  • Science & Tech

    Robotic insects make first controlled flight

    The demonstration of the first controlled flight of an insect-sized robot is the culmination of more than a decade’s work, led by researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard.

    6 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Faculty Council meeting held April 24

    At their last meeting of the year on April 24, the members of the Faculty Council approved preliminary versions of the University Extension School courses for 2013-14 and Courses of Instruction for 2013-14.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Reflections on a nuclear mission

    Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and Nobel laureate Roy Glauber reflected on his two years in Los Alamos, N.M., during World War II as part of the Manhattan Project, which developed the world’s first atomic bomb.

    5 minutes
  • Arts & Culture

    Digitizing a movement

    A team of Harvard scholars is cataloging, and transcribing, and digitizing thousands of 18th- and 19th-century anti-slavery petitions held in the Massachusetts State Archives.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Talent on the sidelines

    Every spring, high-achieving high school seniors around the country play the college admissions game in the lead-up to the May 1 decision deadline. Research by Christopher Avery of HKS research shows that many poor but promising students are sitting out.

    6 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Sorensen named trustee of National Humanities Center

    Diana Sorensen is one of four new trustees of the National Humanities Center.

    1 minute
  • Arts & Culture

    ‘Pippin’ meets Tony

    When artistic director Diane Paulus gave the classic “Pippin” a facelift for 2013-13 lineup of the American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.), people took notice. Now “Pippin” has been nominated for 10 Tony Awards, including best director of a musical for Paulus.

    2 minutes
  • Arts & Culture

    Making poetry sing

    Radcliffe fellow and classically trained pianist Tsitsi Jaji uses her musical expertise and knowledge of comparative literature to explore how composers of African descent set poetry to music for solo voice and piano.

    5 minutes