The Radcliffe Institute, Harvard’s institute for advanced study, today announces the launch of its first public art competition, to be held annually and dedicated to giving Harvard students the opportunity to create new art for the community. The winning student or team of students will receive a $5,000 prize and funding for construction of a…

New research that combines cell phone data from 15 million people in Kenya with detailed information on the regional incidence of malaria has revealed, on the largest scale so far, how human travel patterns contribute to the disease’s spread. The findings from researchers at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and seven other institutions indicate…

Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) announced this week that it will name a distinguished visiting professorship in architecture in honor of John Portman, founder and chairman of John Portman & Associates, a leading design firm based in Atlanta, Georgia. The John Portman Visiting Chair in Architecture will create a special opportunity for the GSD…

The Nieman Foundation for Journalism is offering a new research and study opportunity at Harvard: a short-term visiting fellowship for individuals wishing to work on special projects designed to advance journalism. Those who should consider applying include publishers, programmers, Web designers, media analysts, academics, journalists and others interested in enhancing quality, building new business models…

In the year 2000, the United Nations developed an ambitious plan to meet the needs of some of the world’s poorest people by setting out the Millennium Declaration. A year later, eight Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, were established as part of the effort. Among them was a goal that called for achieving universal primary…

In anticipation of the final presidential debate, HLS Professor and Director of the Harvard Negotiation & Mediation Clinical Program Robert Bordone and Clinical Fellow Heather Scheiwe Kulp weighed in on the previous debates from a mediator’s point of view. After the first presidential debate, it was hard to tell whether the pollsters and pundits were…

Voters in the pivotal battleground states of Ohio and Florida show strong interest in global security issues, and want to hear the candidates’ views on defense, Iran and terrorism in the final presidential debate, according to a new poll conducted for Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. While the poll confirms…

“The Morality of the Free Market” was the topic of a Sept. 27 address at Harvard Law School by Arthur Brooks, the president of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research organization in Washington, D.C. The event was sponsored by the Harvard Law Federalist Society. Brooks presented the case for how the fight for free…

Textile imports from China. Trade gaps with Japan. Pirated music in Canada. World Trade Organization technology tariffs. These are just a few of the issues Ambassador Charlene Barshefsky negotiated as United States Trade Representative from 1997 to 2001. On October 3, Barshefsky came to Harvard Law School to share her experiences with students in the…

Laboratory-modified, highly virulent strains of the H5N1 virus were recently developed in such a way that they can be passed from one mammal to another (ferrets), suggesting that the new and potentially dangerous strain might easily be transferrable between humans. A new commentary in the journal mBio by HSPH faculty members Marc Lipsitch and Barry…

Patients entering hospitals with heart attacks in states with mandatory public reporting are less likely to receive angioplasties to fix heart blockages than patients in states without public reporting, according to a new study from Harvard School of Public Health. The patients most affected were those considered “high-risk,” that is, those who were extremely sick…

Atmospheric chemists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have found that when it comes to secondary organic material in the atmosphere, there are two distinct breeds: liquids and jellies. Secondary organic materials (SOM) are airborne particles that have begun to react with gases in the atmosphere. In the past 20 years’…

It wasn’t inevitable that Harvard Law School graduate students Erum Khalid Sattar and Rebecca Zaman would meet so soon, or even at all. Sattar has been at the law school for three years, pursuing a doctorate in juridical science (S.J.D.); Zaman arrived in August to begin a year of study for a master’s in law…

Harvard Law School announced today that it will move to videoconferencing technology to conduct interviews of candidates for admission to its J.D. program. The school’s Admissions Office will also offer interview opportunities to more applicants than in the past, said Assistant Dean and Chief Admissions Officer Jessica Soban. The HLS Admissions Office has included telephone…

Is the International Criminal Court succeeding? According to Assistant Clinical Professor Alex Whiting, the answer is a tentative yes. Nevertheless, Whiting—who serves as the investigation coordinator in the Office of the Prosecutor at the ICC—provided a candid portrait of the court’s strengths and weaknesses at a talk on Wednesday, Oct. 10, sponsored by the Harvard…

Radcliffe Gymnasium was filled on Monday afternoon when Lizabeth Cohen, dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and Howard Mumford Jones Professor of American Studies, delivered her inaugural dean’s lecture, “Place, People, and Power: City Building in Postwar America,” to a crowd of faculty, students, and friends of the institute. Harvard University President Drew…

In Harvard’s Pierce Hall, the surface of a small germanium-coated gold sheet shines vividly in crimson. A centimeter to the right, where the same metallic coating is literally only about 20 atoms thicker, the surface is a dark blue, almost black. The colors form the logo of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences…

It’s time for biostatistics and epidemiology class. The professor is discussing Scotsman James Lind, who, in the mid-1700s, conducted one of the first-ever clinical experiments. Lind studied the way different foods affected sailors sick with scurvy and found that only those who added citrus fruits to their regular diet recovered. It’s an interesting lecture. But…

With the November 2012 elections on the horizon, Americans surveyed in national polls consistently rank the economy as their number one concern. Public health professionals can have a big impact on this ballot-box issue. More than 17 percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product is spent on health care—in many cases, for conditions that could…

How accepting or hostile a community is toward former child soldiers can help determine whether they will fare well or reoffend, according to Theresa Betancourt, associate professor of child health and human rights at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and director of the Research Program on Children and Global Adversity at the François-Xavier Bagnoud…

Robert H. Sitkoff, the John L. Gray Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, has been appointed to two new Uniform Law Commission committees—the study committee on trust protectors, and the drafting committee on Series of Unincorporated Business Entities. Established in 1892, the Uniform Law Commission provides states with models for non-partisan legislation that brings…

Raffles, kudos, and awards were on the agenda at the Harvard School of Public Health’s Postdoc Appreciation Day celebration to recognize postdocs and their mentors. The September 21, 2012 event, held in the Kresge cafeteria, coincided with the fourth annual National Postdoc Appreciation Week. HSPH Dean Julio Frenk highlighted the accomplishments of the School’s postdocs,…

Diébédo Francis Kéré describes the secondary school he has designed in his home country of Burkina Faso as “a project about architecture, people, and dealing with two different cultures.”  The project won the 2012 Global Holcim Gold Award. This school project, in one of the world’s poorest countries, aims to provide further education to the…

By slowing down our eating and being more mindful of where our food comes from, we can shed extra pounds without following a particular diet, Lilian Cheung, lecturer in nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), wrote September 25, 2012 in a Huffington Post blog. “It is possible to attain a healthy weight and…

A number of Harvard Law School graduates across the country are candidates for office in this year’s presidential and Congressional races. In a historic first, both candidates of the major parties in the U.S. presidential election are graduates of Harvard Law School. President Barack Obama is a member of the Class of  ’91 and his…

Today, Junot Díaz, Pulitzer–prize winning writer, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Radcliffe Institute fellow in 2003–2004, was named a 2012 MacArthur Fellow. Díaz — selected for his creativity, originality, and potential to make important contributions in the future — is one of 23 recipients of this year’s “genius grant,” which awards fellows $500,000 over five…

With jazz in the background and pizza and empanadas set out on the table, it was an inviting scene at the Harvard School of Public Health’s Office of Diversity open house on September 13, 2012. Throughout the day, a steady stream of students came to meet the staff and learn about the variety of programs…

The raffle winner of a helmet at the annual Longwood Bike Fair did not have a bike to use it with but says her new helmet provided the extra push she needed to buy the bicycle she’d been thinking about. It’s exactly what organizers of the fair, held on Tuesday September 25, hoped they’d hear.…

Katherine Burton Jones has been appointed assistant director and research adviser for the Harvard Extension School’s Master of Liberal Arts (ALM) program in Museum Studies. Jones has taught courses in the Museum Studies program for the last decade and has served as the program’s research adviser since 2004. Previously, she was the assistant dean for…

Viet D. Dinh ’93, founding partner of Bancroft and a professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, spoke at Harvard Law School on Sept. 18 at an event sponsored by Harvard Law School’s Program on the Legal Profession. Dinh, who served as U.S. assistant attorney general for legal policy from 2001 to 2003 and played a key…