Featured series 
Tag: Harvard History
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Campus & Community
The gym unlocker
Ed Kelley, who has worked at Harvard since 1959, is still going strong at age 78, opening the Malkin and Hemenway gyms most mornings, greeting all who arrive.
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Campus & Community
Digitizing Dunster
To celebrate Dunster’s 400th year, the Harvard University Archives, with generous support from the Sidney Verba Fund, has digitized the Dunster family papers and made them available on the Internet.
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Campus & Community
Freshman Parents Weekend
In October, Freshman Parents Weekend fills campus with mothers and fathers eager to and experience all aspects of Harvard life.
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Campus & Community
Weld Boathouse
Harvard’s Weld Boathouse has been enchanting rowers and residents for more than 100 years.
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Campus & Community
After 100+ years, a first: homecoming at Harvard
The nation’s oldest university, which has been handing out homework since 1636 and handing off footballs since 1874, will host its first homecoming this fall, a potential new tradition designed to attract alumni to campus in years that The Game is played at Yale.
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Campus & Community
Wednesday Tea
Tea time at Harvard is a longstanding tradition. The Rev. Professor Peter J. Gomes remarks on drinking tea at Harvard in 1968 while drinking tea today.
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Campus & Community
Around the Schools: Radcliffe Institute
The Radcliffe Institute’s first decade is being celebrated this fall, starting with a two-day symposium Oct. 8 and 9 — a star-power taste of the institute’s signature interdisciplinary exchanges.
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Arts & Culture
What a set of pipes
Over the next few years two new organs will take the place of the iconic C.B. Fisk organ in Appleton Chapel. The solution will help the church solve a long-standing musical dilemma.
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Arts & Culture
Practice, education, activism
The Graduate School of Design at Harvard celebrates one of its own, the late J. Max Bond Jr., a pioneering architect.
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Campus & Community
Hasty Pudding Club Forms at Harvard: September 8, 1795
On this day in 1795, 21 Harvard students gathered in a dorm room and formed a secret social club to cultivate “friendship and patriotism.” Members agreed to take turns providing a pot of hasty pudding for the meetings. Thus did the Hasty Pudding Club, the nation’s oldest dramatic institution, get its name…
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Campus & Community
Welcoming Gen Ed
In a celebratory forum in Lowell Lecture Hall Sept. 3, Harvard President Drew Faust and others explain and extol Harvard’s new General Education requirements, which take effect this year with the Class of 2013.
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Campus & Community
Around the Schools: Harvard University Extension School
The Harvard University Extension School will celebrate its centennial anniversary this fall. A private convocation will be held Sept. 25, and a public panel on the future of technology is slated for Nov. 18.
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Campus & Community
Faust delivers first Morning Prayers of academic year
Harvard President Drew Faust, following long tradition by leading the academic year’s first Morning Prayers service at Appleton Chapel, praised the sense of common purpose brought by a coordinated School calendar. “We have chosen a common calendar for the common good,” she said.
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Campus & Community
This month in Harvard history
June 21, 1776 — The College reassembles in Cambridge after its eight-month stay in Concord.
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Science & Tech
Green reunions: Groundwork set
As of June 4, Harvard has celebrated 358 commencements. Add to that the simultaneous celebration of untold thousands of reunions.
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Campus & Community
Highlights from a memorable Commencement
On June 4, administrators sighed with relief at the weather, speakers went over their notes, and graduates congregated in black-tasseled flocks alongside a rainbow of professors in their own caps and gowns. Meanwhile, the Harvard Gazette staff fanned out across the campus on Commencement day to pick a rainbow of their own — colorful accounts…
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Campus & Community
This month in Harvard history
June 1913 — Having proved itself during a five-year experimental period, the Business School emerges from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences to become an independent graduate school.
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Campus & Community
2008-09: A look back
As Commencement closes another chapter of the Harvard story, here is a brief backward glance at highlights of the year that was.
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Campus & Community
Janitor’s granddaughter fulfills Harvard dream
Harvard is in my blood, though not in the traditional sense. I was born and brought up in Cambridge, Mass., as were my mother and her siblings. My grandparents struggled to raise seven children during tough financial times, and a college education was not an option.
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Campus & Community
For the 20th straight year, the peal of bells will mark Commencement
A joyous peal of bells will ring throughout Cambridge today (June 4). In celebration of the city of Cambridge and of the country’s oldest university — and of our earlier history when bells of varying tones summoned us from sleep to prayer, work, or study — this ancient yet new sound will fill Harvard Square…
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Campus & Community
Dean Tosteson dies at age 84
Daniel C. Tosteson, the Caroline Shields Walker Distinguished Professor of Cell Biology, who served an extraordinary two decades as dean of Harvard Medical School, from 1977 to 1997, died peacefully on May 27 after a long illness. He was 84 years old.
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Science & Tech
Class of 1984 takes giant step in reducing carbon footprint
For its fifth reunion, the Class of 1984 added community service to the celebration — a novel feature that other reuniting classes have since copied.
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Campus & Community
As the Civil War finally ends, a relieved, sad, graduation day
The Commencement of 1865 and the day of commemoration that followed it hold a unique spot in Harvard history. Though some military actions were still taking place, the Civil War had essentially ended in April of that year. John Langdon Sibley, head librarian at Harvard, wrote in his diary that there had already been a…
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Campus & Community
Commencement orators talk the talk
A journalist, a landscape architect, and a Latin scholar are today’s Commencement orators. They fulfill a University tradition dating back to 1642. They also embark on three journeys that hint at the wide array of academic paths leading outward from Harvard.
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Campus & Community
This month in Harvard history
May 13, 1958 — On the steps of Widener Library, the Harvard Glee Club and the Radcliffe Choral Society perform choruses from Bach’s B-minor Mass. Although the groups have performed together for decades, the occasion marks the Choral Society’s first participation in a Glee Club outdoor concert.
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Campus & Community
This month in Harvard history
May 21, 1940 — “The Harvard Crimson” publishes a statement endorsed by hundreds of students vowing “never under any circumstances to follow the footsteps of the students of 1917” who had gone off to fight in World War I. Thirty-four members of the Class of 1917 defend their actions in a statement published on May…
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Campus & Community
This month in Harvard history
May 26, 1902 — The Harvard Corporation approves the construction of a temporary addition to the south side of Boylston Hall. Completed over the summer and measuring 83 by 33 feet, the add-on consists of a single large laboratory for elementary-chemistry classes and a general-use basement. The addition opens in the fall, with a stucco…
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Campus & Community
This month in Harvard history
May 12, 1638 — By order of the Great and General Court, “Newetowne” is renamed “Cambrige” (Cambridge).
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Arts & Culture
Play space
The Adams House Pool Theatre sits in the heart of Westmorly Court, one of the several “Gold Coast” dormitories that now make up Adams House. Originally built as a pool, the space has become home to unconventional, spirited productions and has gained a reputation as an alternative venue on campus.
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Campus & Community
This month in Harvard history
April 6-7, 1951 — The Law School holds an Institute for Practicing Lawyers focusing on legal problems of mobilizing for the Korean conflict.