For the second year in a row, a team of Harvard Law School students won the North American regional moot court competition on WTO law at the ELSA Moot Court Competition (EMC²). The second annual competition was held in San Jose, Costa Rica and was organized in cooperation with the Costa Rican Society of International…

As the gay rights movement continues to gain momentum, it’s easy to forget just how recently the tides of change were moving in the opposite direction, Associate White House Counsel Kathleen Hartnett ’00 said at an April 11 talk at Harvard Law School, hosted by the Harvard chapter of the American Constitution Society. Hartnett, who…

In the wake of the Arab Spring, many observers have commented on the democratizing power of social media and its potential as a revolutionary tool. Todd Mostak, a 2012 graduate of the CMES master’s program who was in his first year at CMES when the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt began, recognized in social media…

A comprehensive global study of the educational and economic impact of stunted cognitive development due to childhood illnesses and other adversities has been launched by researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), with colleagues from across Harvard and other partner institutions. With an award from the “Saving Brains” program of Grand Challenges Canada,…

Federico Capasso, Robert L. Wallace Professor of Applied Physics and Vinton Hayes Senior Research Fellow in Electrical Engineering at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), has been selected to receive the 2013 SPIE Gold Medal. The Gold Medal, awarded to a single recipient annually, is the highest honor bestowed by SPIE, the…

This year, Harvard Law School Clinical Professor Robert Bordone ‘97, director of the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program (HNMCP), developed a capstone consulting project with Major League Baseball (MLB) for his course “Advanced Negotiation: Multiparty Negotiation, Group Decision Making, and Teams,” co-taught with Lecturer on Law Rory Van Loo ’07. MLB tasked the class…

This week, PBS will air “The Central Park Five,” a new documentary by award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns, which tells the story of five black and Latino teenagers who were wrongly convicted of raping and beating a white woman in New York City’s Central Park in 1989. Convicted as teenagers, the five defendants spent between six…

Harvard has been named one of the 322 most environmentally responsible colleges in the U.S. and Canada, according to the Princeton Review. The education services company known for its test prep programs and college rankings, ratings and guidebooks, profiles Harvard in the fourth annual edition of its free downloadable book, “The Princeton Review’s Guide to…

On Friday, April 5, nearly 40 members of the HSPH Alumni Council and Alumni Association Committees gathered on the HSPH campus to kick off their fifth annual spring retreat. An opening reception marked the beginning of a weekend of these volunteer leaders working to align the goals and objectives of the committees and the council. HSPH Dean Julio Frenk joined the…

Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Robert Caro and reporter Beth Macy, who both studied at Harvard as Nieman Fellows, have won two of the three 2013 J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project Awards. Caro will receive the $10,000 Mark Lynton History Prize for his profound understanding of President Lyndon B. Johnson while Macy will be honored with the…

Harvard School of Public Health-affiliated physicians were among the hospital emergency department staff called upon to care for victims of the explosions at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. Stephanie Kayden, M.P.H. ’06, was the senior physician in charge of the emergency room at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) that day. A faculty member…

The Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA) is hosting its annual auction at the Cambridge Queen’s Head Pub in Memorial Hall on Tuesday, April 23. Auction proceeds go directly toward supporting PBHA’s Summer Urban Program (SUP), a network of 12 student-run summer camps that benefit more than 800 children in Boston and Cambridge. This year’s event honors Mel King,…

After Monday’s tragic events at the Boston Marathon, the Kennedy School’s annual Public Service Week began on a somber note. Yet as the Shorenstein Center welcomed Alan Khazei, founder and chief executive officer of Be the Change Inc., co-founder of City Year, and HKS adjunct lecturer, the focus on service and policy seemed timely. Shorenstein Center…

In online learning, there is a sense that everything should be online. We have held a series of town halls across campus to discuss edX/HarvardX. While highly regarded, a number of attendees always came up to me at the end to say, “Why wasn’t this done online? Why didn’t you flip this talk?” The point of the…

The Arnold Arboretum is launching a new series of free public events this spring, each highlighting outstanding plant collections at their peak. Collections Up Close events delve into the diversity of the Arboretum’s Living Collection and celebrate thoughtful observations of the natural world. Through staff-led tours, fun science and art activities for kids, scavenger hunts,…

Privately insured surgical patients who had a complication provided hospitals with a 330% higher profit margin than those without a complication, according to new research from Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health system innovation at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), Boston Consulting Group, Texas Health Resources, and…

A living fossil with an ancestry dating back some 270 million years, Ginkgo biloba stands out in the plant world as an object of fascination. A deciduous gymnosperm that persists as a single genus and species, ginkgo offers scientists a unique glimpse at our botanical and evolutionary past. To celebrate this relict species and explore…

As an enthusiastic supporter of the Special Olympics who has worked for more than two decades with Special Olympics International, Harvard Law School Professor William P. Alford welcomed the opportunity to help bring about the 2013 Special Olympics World Winter Games, held in PyeongChang, Korea, earlier this year. He explains that the millions of athletes…

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has announced the appointment of an advisory committee on Massachusetts judicial nominations to solicit, interview, and comment on applications for federal District Court vacancies in Springfield and Boston. Warren will review the work of the committee and will ultimately recommend judicial nominees to President Obama. The advisory committee is composed of…

Several members of the Harvard Law School faculty and more than a dozen alumni were named to The National Law Journal’s list of 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America. In publishing its first list since 2006, the journal said its goal was to identify members of law’s power elite. The list recognizes the 100 lawyers…

International conference “Painting Beyond Itself: The Medium in the Post-Medium Condition,” held last weekend at the Sackler Museum, was a smashing success with overflowing attendance during the conference’s two days. Plans for a book about the conference are in the works. The event was organized by Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, the William Dorr Boardman Professor of Fine…

Harvard School of Public Health Dean Julio Frenk joined hundreds of scientists, doctors, and technical experts from around the world to launch the Scientific Declaration on Polio Eradication on April 11. The world is closer than ever to eradicating polio, with just 223 cases in five countries last year. To capitalize on this time-limited opportunity to finally end the…

Contrary to popular belief, women generally experience the same coronary artery disease (CAD, or cardiovascular disease) symptoms — including chest pain, pressure, and/or tightness — as men, Catherine Kreatsoulas, research fellow in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), said in an interview with MedPage Today on April 8,…

In the largest-ever study of its kind, an international collaboration of hundreds of scientists has uncovered 74 new genetic markers linked to three common hormonal cancers—breast, prostate, and ovarian—thus setting the stage for new treatments, targeted screening, and a greater understanding of how these diseases develop. The findings were outlined in a series of 13…

David J. Mooney, Robert P. Pinkas Family Professor of Bioengineering at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, has been named among five recipients of the 2013 Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award. Presented by the Harvard Graduate Student Council on April 10, the award honors members of the faculty “who go above and…

Keith Richburg, fellow at the Institute of Politics and China correspondent for The Washington Post from 2009-13, recalled his first trip to China in 1985 and said that the biggest difference between China then and now is the Internet. “The Internet has really changed everything,” he said at a Shorenstein Center event on Tuesday, “particularly…

National Public Health Week (NPHW), being celebrated during the first week of April, focuses on what U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin calls the “extraordinary” returns that come from investments in public health initiatives. In a video marking the beginning of NPHW—organized by the American Public Health Association to raise awareness about public health—Benjamin cited examples such as routine…

The François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard organized a conference on Monday, April 8, that brought to light many of the challenges facing the Roma in Europe. Panelists addressed issues of violence, discrimination, and segregation, and brought together scholars, practitioners, and advocates – many of whom were Roma themselves. The…

An online engineering course in circuits and electronics — created by MIT as an MITx course for the edX platform and offered to San Jose State students for the first time last fall — will be made available to as many as 11 other CSU campuses. The expansion will benefit thousands of students from nearly…

Death rates are rising at rural hospitals that serve many poor and elderly people—and the reason may be their inability to provide the most up-to-date treatment, according to a new Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) study. Given this finding, HSPH researchers say the hospitals may need further help to provide care for these vulnerable…