This semester, Harvard Law School launched the Law and History program of study. The new program of study joins six others, including Law and Social Change, Law and Business, and Law, Science and Technology. These programs guide students in navigating HLS’ extensive course offerings and connect them with faculty whose interests they share. The Law…

It turns out bike-friendliness is second nature for Harvard University. Weeks after being named a Silver-Level Bike Friendly University by the League of American Bicyclists, Harvard University was recognized as a Gold-level Bike Friendly Business by Mayor Menino and the city of Boston. Representatives from Harvard’s Longwood campus were joined by Harvard’s Commuter Choice Program…

Harvard University Provost Alan M. Garber announced that Sarah Thomas of the University of Oxford has been named vice president for the Harvard Library. In this role, Thomas will have overall responsibility for the Harvard Library, and will collaborate closely with the Library Board, the Faculty Advisory Council and the Library Leadership Team. Garber noted,…

The Harvard Library and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University are pleased to announce the appointment of Peter Suber as director of the Office for Scholarly Communication (OSC), starting July 1, 2013. Suber will continue his current activities as director of the Harvard Open Access Project, based at the Berkman Center,…

The conversation around health care policy in the United States, mired as it is in partisan bickering, has gone off course from what should be its larger goal — building the foundation of a secure and prosperous society, according to Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) student Suzanne Brundage, SM ’14. Having recently left a…

More than 5% of U.S. teens and adolescents use snuff, chewing tobacco, or dipping tobacco—and that rate has been about the same for a decade, according to new research from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the University of Pretoria in South Africa. In 2011, 5.2% of middle and high school kids used smokeless…

Bicycle engineering guidelines often used by state regulators to design bicycle facilities need to be overhauled to reflect current cyclists’ preferences and safety data, according to a new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers. They say that U.S. guidelines should be expanded to offer cyclists more riding options and call for endorsing…

EdX, the not-for-profit online learning initiative composed of the leading global institutions of the xConsortium, today announced another doubling of its university membership with the addition of its first Asian institutions and further expansion in the Ivy League. The xConsortium is gaining 15 prestigious higher education institutions, bringing its total to 27, including Tsinghua University…

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study awarded the Captain Jonathan Fay Prize to the graduating seniors whose theses set forth the most imaginative work and original research. This year three Fay Prize recipients were chosen from 81 Thomas Hoopes Prize winners for outstanding scholarly work or research: mathematics concentrator Ashok Cutkosky for his thesis Polymer Simulations…

Members of the community recently flocked to the Weissman Preservation Center and the Collections Conservation Lab for their Open House tours, held in celebration of the American Library Association’s Preservation Week 2013. The informal tours gave visitors a glimpse into the dedication, precision, and level of care provided to Harvard’s millions of books, photographs, artifacts and…

In the digital age, some professors might grumble that students today don’t even know how to read a newspaper. Jill Lepore, David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History, Harvard College Professor, and chair of the History and Literature Program, knows that they’re right. Lepore recently shared her story during “Reality Matters,” organized by Harvard…

When it comes to using new technology in education, “the trick is not to adopt, but to adapt,” Harvard School of Public Health Dean Julio Frenk told the audience at the Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching (HILT) conference, held at Harvard’s Science Center on May 8, 2013. The conference focused on the essentials of good teaching…

Anniversaries offer an opportunity to reflect on the past and contemplate the future. One year ago, we announced the launch of both edX, the not-for-profit open-source online learning platform created by Harvard and MIT, and HarvardX, the partner organization which supports online pedagogy and its application to on-campus education as well as educational research. Harvard’s activities in…

Anant Agarwal, president of edX, the nonprofit online enterprise founded by Harvard and MIT, has been named to the Boston Globe’s 100 Innovators of 2013, “a list of trailblazers working in fields from medicine to robotics to social services.”

Cycling around campus has never been easier or cheaper.  CommuterChoice and Hubway, Metro-Boston’s regional bike share, are happy to announce a new, discounted annual membership rate of just $50 for students, faculty and staff.  That’s 40% less than the previous cost of membership. Harvard now supports 12 stations, plus there are dozens of locations throughout…

Mohsen Mostafavi, dean of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, is pleased to announce that Gia Wolff, an architect based in Brooklyn, New York, is the winner of the inaugural Wheelwright Prize, a $100,000 traveling fellowship dedicated to fostering new forms of architectural research informed by cross-cultural engagement. The Wheelwright Prize jury—Mostafavi, Yung Ho Chang,…

Patient safety expert Lucian Leape has called for the creation of a federal agency to compel safer hospital practices. He thinks regulation is the only way to effectively reduce the avoidable harm that takes place in the nation’s hospitals. “I’ll put my chips on brute force, and that is regulation,” said Leape, adjunct professor of health policy…

It’s Wednesday night in Cambridge and Thursday morning in Beijing, and their seminar rooms are some 6,700 miles apart, but for 30 students from Harvard Law School and the Renmin University of China School of Law, common interests and videoconferencing equipment easily bridge these distances. During this spring semester, students in a reading group taught…

In March, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick ’82 nominated Harvard Law School’s Criminal Justice Institute clinical instructor Gloria Tan to a seat on the Massachusetts Juvenile Court. Tan came to CJI, which supervises third-year law students representing indigent criminal defendants in local district and juvenile courts, after serving as a public defender for the Committee for…

The biennial Harvard Law School Conference on Intellectual Property Law attracted scores of IP lawyers, business people, academicians, and judges to the school April 12 to discuss recent developments in IP law. According to William W. Fisher, the WilmerHale Professor of Intellectual Property Law at HLS and co-chair of the event since its inception 10…

Harvard Law School Professor Jeannie Suk ’02 received the Charles Fried Intellectual Diversity Award from the Harvard Federalist Society in April. The award is bestowed upon a faculty member who has furthered the cause of intellectual diversity and free and open debate at Harvard Law School, both inside and outside of the classroom, regardless of…

Harvard Law School has announced the appointment of Urs Gasser LL.M. ’03, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, as a professor of practice. The professorships of practice at Harvard Law School are given to outstanding individuals whose teaching is informed by extensive expertise from the worlds of law practice, the judiciary,…

Environmental lawlessness was the topic of discussion on April 10, as Richard Lazarus ’79, one of the nation’s foremost experts on environmental law, gave a lecture marking his appointment to the Howard J. and Katherine W. Aibel Professorship of Law. Speaking before a crowd of family, students, colleagues, and friends—including Supreme Court Chief Justice John…

The Nieman Foundation for Journalism has selected 24 journalists as members of the 76th class of Nieman Fellows at Harvard University. The group includes reporters, editors, columnists, digital media leaders and producers in print, broadcast and online who work around the globe and across media platforms. Announcing the class, Nieman Curator Ann Marie Lipinski said,…

Ninety-three students spent April 26-28, 2013 learning how to rapidly respond to a refugee crisis while being faced with a host of stressful distractions from confrontational child-soldiers to rogue journalists. It was all part of the annual disaster simulation organized by The Lavine Family Humanitarian Studies Initiative, the flagship training and professional development program of…

Researchers from several Harvard Schools and initiatives were instrumental in developing the city of Boston’s first Cyclist Safety Report released on May 15, 2013 by Mayor Tom Menino. The report examined four years of bicycle crash incident data supplied by Boston Police and Boston EMS that will now inform city officials in their continued efforts…

A grandmother’s gift was the inspiration for this year’s winner of the Visiting Committee Prize for Undergraduate Book Collecting. Catherine Katz ’13 was the first place winner for her entry “My Grandmother’s Childhood Library: Collecting Early 20th Century Stratemeyer Syndicate Children’s Series.” Katz said her grandmother’s gift of a half dozen original editions of favorite…

Spring flowers and new leaves at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University signal the return of schoolchildren for outdoor field study experiences. For three decades, the Arboretum has reached out to students from Boston schools to participate in structured explorations of the collections, life science instruction, and engaging interactions with the natural world. This season…

Quan Lu, Mark and Catherine Winkler Assistant Professor of Lung Biology in the Departments of Environmental Health and Genetics and Complex Diseases, is the 2013 recipient of the Armen H. Tashjian, Jr. Excellence in Endocrine Research Award. He presented the talk, “Message in a Nano-Vesicle: A New Way of Receptor Signaling and Cell Communication” at…

John W. Hutchinson, Abbott and James Lawrence Professor of Engineering and Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Mechanics Emeritus, has been elected to foreign membership in the Royal Society. He was among eight foreign members and 44 new fellows welcomed on May 3 by the United Kingdom’s elite national academy. Hutchinson is a seminal scholar in…