Tag: Lecture
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Nation & World
Bacteria have more to say than previously thought
Bacteria are the oldest living organisms, dating back 4 billion years. So it is only logical that they have evolved ways to communicate.
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Nation & World
Taking on the ‘Godzilla Economy’
The president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas delivered a somber economic message Monday night (Feb. 23) during the annual Albert H. Gordon Lecture at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum. But while Richard Fisher admitted that policymakers should have heeded the signs of financial stress long ago, he expressed hope that…
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Nation & World
Briggs-Copeland reading features poets Klink and Richards
Tonight (Feb. 19) at 7, Houghton Library hosts Harvard’s first Briggs-Copeland Poetry Reading. The event, held in the Edison and Newman Room, will feature readings by Joanna Klink and Peter Richards, two of Harvard’s six Briggs-Copeland Lecturers. Bret Anthony Johnston, director of the creative writing program in the Department of English, will provide an introduction.
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Nation & World
‘Passing’ in colonial Colombia
Radcliffe Fellow Joanne Rappaport gave a glimpse of her work last week (Feb. 4) during a talk at the Radcliffe Gymnasium, where 80 listeners were drawn in by her intriguing title: “Mischievous Lovers, Hidden Moors, and Cross-Dressers: The Meaning of Passing in Colonial Bogotá.”
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Nation & World
Mining exec: Coal vital to energy mix
The leader of one of the nation’s largest coal mining companies said Tuesday (Feb. 3) that coal is a vital part of the nation’s energy mix and that clean coal technology must be developed if the atmosphere is to stop warming.
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Nation & World
‘Nation-shaking’ racial, ethnic changes
Real earthquakes are slow to build and fast to erupt. Other, metaphorical, quakes, can follow the same pattern — and be just as earthshaking.
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Nation & World
Rights, AIDS, past and future
Sixty years after the United Nations declared health care a basic human right, the AIDS epidemic highlights how much work remains to be done as the disease rages on among populations with little access to quality care.
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Nation & World
‘The health of poetry’
As a graduate student at Oxford, Gwyneth Lewis wrote her dissertation on 18th century literary forgery. But as a working poet for three decades — and this year as a Radcliffe Fellow — she is as far from that fraud as conceivable.
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Nation & World
Woolsey: New technologies will make need for oil obsolete
Salt was once highly valued as a preservative for meat, but eventually a new technology — refrigeration — greatly reduced its value. Today, rather than a contentious commodity, salt is a humdrum condiment.
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Nation & World
Newsmakers
Klaber selected for summit J.D./M.B.A. student Andrew Klaber has been selected as one of 160 emerging leaders from 30 countries in the Asia-Pacific region who will gather at the Four Seasons Hotel in Tokyo for the Asia Society’s Third Annual Asia 21 Young Leaders Summit.
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Nation & World
Tanner lecturer, peacemaker Nusseibeh in search of the improbable
Prior to delivering the first of this year’s Tanner Lectures, political activist Sari Nusseibeh gave the audience a laugh — and a cheat sheet. “My normal attitude in lectures is to doze off when someone is reading them,” he quipped, “so if you do doze off I just want to tell you that my message…
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Nation & World
Stephen R. Prothero to deliver Noble Lectures
New York Times best-selling author and Boston University professor of religion Stephen R. Prothero will deliver this year’s William Belden Noble Lectures, “The Work of Doing Nothing: Wandering as Practice and Play,” Nov. 18-20 at the Memorial Church.
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Nation & World
How the ‘talking machine’ allowed music and dance to cross oceans
In the late 1920s, with the advent of new technology, gramophone and “talking machine” companies were able to capture the sounds and rhythms of life in cities across the globe. From New York to Havana, Paris to Honolulu, labels like Victor, Gramophone Company, and Okeh competed to record vernacular music.
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Nation & World
Chall Lecture focuses on the future of literacy achievement gap
Research shows that there have been positive trends in literacy achievement in the past 25 years. These gains, however, have not included a significant closing of the gaps between racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups, a fact that represents a serious issue in education today.
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Nation & World
GSD lecture and panel address ‘Designing for Sustainability’
Interest in green building is high at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), judging by the attendance at a lecture Tuesday (Oct. 21) in the Stubbins Room at Gund Hall. “Designing for Sustainability” was part of the popular and event-packed sustainability celebration instituted this year by Harvard President Drew Faust.
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Nation & World
Ban calls for international efforts
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on the United States to combat the “imminent threat” of climate change, both by reducing its own greenhouse gas emissions and by leading the effort to craft a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
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Nation & World
NYU chemist Robert Shapiro decries RNA-first possibility
Back in the depths of time, an event almost miraculously improbable happened, creating a long, unlikely molecule. And life arose on Earth. Or, if you prefer, back in the depths of time, in a soup of small, relatively common molecules, an unknown chemical reaction occurred, sustained itself, replicated … and life arose on Earth.
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Nation & World
Sam Nunn to deliver inaugural McNamara Lecture at HKS
Former Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn will deliver the inaugural Robert S. McNamara Lecture on War and Peace, titled “A Race Between Cooperation and Catastrophe,” at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) on Friday (Oct. 17).
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Nation & World
Quinn talks to students of various faiths
If she can help it, Washington Post journalist Sally Quinn prefers to avoid the phrase “spiritual journey.” Quinn, who co-moderates the blog “On Faith” with Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, finds the words overused. But she is quick to acknowledge that people’s relationship to faith can change over time — and having interviewed hundreds of scholars,…
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Nation & World
Lewis Ranieri to deliver Dunlop Lecture on Oct. 1
Lewis Ranieri of Hyperion Private Equity Funds will deliver the ninth annual John T. Dunlop Lecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (HGSD) on Oct. 1. The title of Ranieri’s lecture is “Revolution in Mortgage Finance.”
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Nation & World
Princess Zahra outlines the work of Aga Khan Development Network
Princess Zahra Aga Khan ’94 came home to Harvard this week (May 13) to present a hopeful vision of what education in the developing world can be like.
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Nation & World
Where science and religion meet, from an Islamic perspective
Where and how science and religion intersect is a debate that dates back centuries; it’s also a regular part of contemporary discourse. The discussion took center stage at the 2007-08 Paul Tillich Lecture on Monday (May 5) in the Science Center’s lecture hall B, where a noted astrophysicist and religious scholar explored the deeper dimensions…
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Nation & World
Panels, lectures to mark Asia Center anniversary
The Harvard University Asia Center, which celebrated its official opening in March 1998, will commemorate its 10th anniversary May 1-2.
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Nation & World
Markey addresses ‘Future of Energy’
The chair of the U.S. House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming struck an optimistic tone about the planet’s climate crisis Monday (April 21), saying that an energy revolution is in the offing if government can just get the policy right.
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Nation & World
The literary roots of human rights
The aim was determining the truth and the technique was torture. Pain was administered in secret, under strict guidelines, often with a judge and doctor present. Once a suspect confessed, the confession would have to be repeated in court.
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Nation & World
Surgeon describes horrors that ensue when rape is a ‘weapon of war’
Denis Mukwege, a recent visitor to Harvard, is slow-spoken, weary, and grave. And well he might be. For nearly a decade, Mukwege has been doctor to thousands of women raped in the course of a long civil war in south central Africa — in effect, that continent’s World War II — which has so far…
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Nation & World
The perils of historical fiction
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner, author of the celebrated “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes,” delivered the Tanner Lectures at Harvard last week (April 9-11).
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Nation & World
Zoellick wants to ‘retool’ the World Bank
World Bank President Robert Zoellick reiterated his call to retool the organization to better meet the new set of development challenges across the globe during a discussion Thursday night (April 3) at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at Harvard Kennedy School.