The future of the environment, and, with that, the future of the world, is an issue of growing urgency. How can we work to combat the present reality of climate change, and address those who are directly impacted by it? The Harvard College Women’s Center answers with its new Statement of Commitment to Environmental Justice.…

Plants fuel the Earth’s biodiversity, connecting humans to all parts of the biological world around them. Giving scientists and non-scientists access to accurate knowledge about the evolutionary forces that generate species is the motivation behind the work of Robin Hopkins, assistant professor of organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard and Faculty Fellow at the Arnold…

The Harvard Art Museums are pleased to announce an extraordinary gift of 70 sketchbooks by internationally renowned artist Otto Piene (1928–2014); the gift was made by poet and author Elizabeth Goldring, the artist’s wife. Dating from 1935 to 2014, the largely unpublished sketchbooks reflect interdisciplinary, cross-media experiments from Piene’s long career in the Boston area…

The Office of the Vice Provost for Research and the Office of the Vice Provost for International Affairs are pleased to announce the 2019 awardees of the Lemann Brazil Research Fund. “We are particularly excited about the breadth of disciplines comprising this year’s awardee cohort,” said Vice Provost for Research and Professor of Materials Science…

New research led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health has identified numerous genes that influence how cells respond to saturated fatty acids. Some of these genes have promise as potential therapeutic targets for treating metabolic diseases associated with lipotoxicity, including obesity, diabetes, and heart failure. The study also provides new insights into how…

Do gender-diverse companies make more money than businesses run primarily by men? If research says they perform better, that could bolster the argument that women should have more access to top positions in organizations. But previous studies have produced conflicting results. Why? We put this question to Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Letian Zhang, who studies…

Susan Rubin Suleiman, Ph.D., A.M., A.B., has won many awards over her storied career as an educator and writer, but was recently awarded Légion d’honneur, France’s highest decoration, a particularly poignant recognition of her work and personal connection to France and its people. Her fascination with France began as a child, later informing her studies as…

Top leaders of a global consulting firm longed to add more women to its partner ranks, if women would just put in the hours necessary to compete. But mothers would always prioritize their children’s needs over those of clients, they reasoned. There was probably nothing they could do to change that. Even so, the executives…

The American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) at Harvard University, under the leadership of Terrie and Bradley Bloom Artistic Director Diane Paulus and Executive Producer Diane Borger, raised a record $1.4 million in support of the theater’s artistic, community, and education programs at its annual fundraising gala held April 1. More than 500 guests attended the event at the Boch Center Wang Theatre that celebrated…

On April 4 and 5, Harvard students, faculty, and staff, along with nearly 40 undergraduate students from across the country, will meet for the 2019 Engaged Scholarship & Social Justice Undergraduate Research Conference (ESSJ). The conference is free and open to the public.  All sessions will be held at the Student Organization Center at Hilles.…

Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study will host Vision & Justice, a landmark two-day creative convening that will explore the role of the arts in the construction of citizenship, race, and justice. The Vision & Justice program, which will take place on April 25-26, features luminaries in the fields of music, photography, film, and…

Clinicians and public health practitioners should start considering the concept of flourishing when examining patients and assessing population-level health trends, according to a new Viewpoint article in JAMA, authored by Tyler VanderWeele, Ph.D. (Human Flourishing Program — Harvard), Eileen McNeely, Ph.D. (SHINE — Harvard), and Howard K. Koh, M.D., M.P.H. (Culture of Health — Harvard). It…

It takes transformational leadership to inspire individuals to sacrifice the comforts of the here and now for the benefits of the there and then. That was the central message of the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative’s (ALI) 2019 Climate Change Deep Dive. The event provided ALI Fellows an in-depth view of the complexities and opportunities surrounding…

Leadership requires vision. The idea itself is not new, but as circumstances change, so, too, does the vision required. Former Delaware Governor Jack Markell summed up this idea in a recent visit to the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “It is very important that everybody who’s in an executive leadership position in government…

Proposed changes in how the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) assesses the health risks of fine particulate matter, a form of air pollution that has been linked to an array of diseases, would significantly undermine the agency’s ability to protect the public from air pollution, according to a new paper in Science co-authored by Francesca Dominici,…

When we look at the way we live on our planet, there are ethical issues all around us: racism, inequality, migration, conflict and peace. To examine these issues, Harvard Divinity School has created a very different kind of executive education program, designed around personal development, to give leaders the resources they need to be agents…

Some of the most important medications doctors have at their disposal have been rendered ineffective by parasites, viruses, and bacteria that have evolved resistance against them, and the problem is poised to get worse. Drug-resistant strains of gonorrhea, salmonella, Escherichia coli (E. coli), and many other disease-causing agents are flourishing around the world, and the…

Harvard’s first exhibition of works produced in art workshops for people with disabilities (and only the second devoted to self-taught artists) “Eye Eye Nose Mouth: Art, Disability, and Mental Illness in Shiga-ken, Japan, and Nanjing, China” opened last month at the Harvard Asia Center (CGIS South Concourse). In preparation for the exhibition, co-curators Raphael Koenig…

Harvard’s Office of Technology Development (OTD) has launched an Experts-in-Residence (XIR) program, creating a powerful new resource for Harvard faculty and researchers to accelerate startup formation and support the commercialization of University innovations. Initially, 28 XIR have volunteered for the program. Experts include partners at venture capital firms, scientific entrepreneurs, research and development (R&D) executives,…

The 2019 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting was awarded Tuesday to J. David McSwane and Andrew Chavez of the Dallas Morning News, for their series “Pain and Profit.” In reporting “Pain and Profit” the Dallas Morning News found that thousands of sick and disabled Texans were being denied life-sustaining drugs and treatments by the private…

The home remodeling market in the U.S. expanded by more than 50 percent since the end of the Great Recession, according to Improving America’s Housing 2019, a new report released March 12 by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. The 20th anniversary report in the series produced biennially by the center’s Remodeling Futures Program…

On March 12, Harvard Management Company (HMC) announced that William (Bill) M. Lewis Jr. ’78, M.B.A. ’82 has been elected to serve on the company’s board of directors. Lewis is currently a managing director and co-chairman of investment banking at Lazard Ltd., a global investment bank and financial advisory company. Before joining Lazard in 2004,…

Democrats and Republicans are more divided today than at almost any other time in United States history. According to a 2018 survey, when asked to describe members of the opposite political party, 61 percent of Democrats described Republicans as racist, bigoted, and/or sexist, and 49 percent of Republicans described Democrats as ignorant. These statistics capture the underlying tension between the…

If you’re talking to a person who’s skeptical about climate change, should you argue with them about scientific evidence? Maybe not, says Aaron Bernstein, co-director of the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment (C-CHANGE) at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. It may be more productive to talk with them about a…

It’s estimated that about 12 million people in the U.S. are misdiagnosed in outpatient care every year. And that’s a very conservative estimate, according to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Michael Barnett. Now, a new study led by Barnett, assistant professor of health policy and management, suggests that pooling the diagnoses of multiple…

The research paper titled “Risks to Patient Privacy: A Re-identification of Patients in Maine and Vermont Statewide Hospital Data,” reveals that patients’ personal records in hospitals can still be re-identified even when data identifiers such as names and addresses were removed to follow the HIPAA Safe Harbor de-identification guidelines. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability…

Using artistic tools like music, storytelling, photos, and multimedia could be a powerful way to promote healing as well as social justice. That was the message at a recent Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health event that featured Esperanza Spalding, a Grammy-winning jazz bassist, vocalist, and composer and a professor of practice in Harvard…