Tag: War

  • Nation & World

    Celebrating the humanities

    If scholars were celebrities, life might look a little bit like it does on the day of the annual Jefferson Lecture (May 2), with interviews and toasts in anticipation not of a concert or play but a speech on the humanities.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Harvard honors veterans

    In what is believed to be the largest gathering of uniformed students at the University since Winston Churchill spoke on campus in 1943, more than 170 Harvard veterans from all the service branches gathered at Cambridge’s Sheraton Commander Hotel April 25 for a dinner honoring students who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    For Libya, ‘no compromise’ in sight

    Libyans want freedom, but the road to democracy is paved with unanswered questions. With the country torn by internal warfare, former Libyan diplomat Ali Suleiman Aujali and other experts gathered at the Harvard Kennedy School to look for answers.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Not so different after all

    Marines in Iraq, students at Harvard are alike in wondering: Where do their lives go next?

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Back from Afghanistan

    A veteran, now a midcareer student at the Harvard Kennedy School, reflects on the values that his military peers bring to campus. Still, when a sharp noise splits the air, he ducks.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Visions of war

    An exhibit at Harvard’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts explores the new ways that artists see war.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Halberstam honored with square

    A square at the intersection of Linden, Bow, and Mt. Auburn streets has been named in honor of the late David L. Halberstam ’55, a journalist who wrote for The Harvard Crimson as an undergraduate.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    The oozing fog of war

    During a Harvard panel discussion, three authorities on international conflict discussed the complexities on the ground and in international law because of the spreading fog of warfare.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Post-traumatic stress

    Terry Keane, a longtime PTSD researcher and associate chief of staff for research and development at the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System, says researchers in recent years have learned much about post-traumatic stress, including that it is both more prevalent and more treatable than previously supposed.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Playing on our instincts

    Assistant clinical professor of psychology Deirdre Barrett says that many of today’s ills come from intentional overstimulation of natural human impulses, giving people hard-to-resist appetites for everything from fighting to sex to unhealthy foods.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Young people polled

    In a poll conducted by the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School, nearly half of young Americans said that the economy is the national issue that concerns them most, more than double the next-highest issue, health care.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Bringing science back to Liberian classrooms

    Adam Cohen, assistant professor in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Ben Rapoport, a student at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are bringing science to war-torn Liberia.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Working to lift the fog of war

    Thousands of miles from his Harvard lab, Kevin Kit Parker is lugging a gun and his engineer’s sensibilities through the mountains south of Kabul, in Afghanistan’s Wardak and Logar Provinces.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    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.

    15 minutes
  • Nation & World

    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.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    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…

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    At ROTC commissioning, Faust touts idea of ‘soldier-scholar’

    Barron, Bilotti, Bras, Chiappini, Doohovskoy, Kristol, Pellegrini, West. That’s roll call for eight 2009 Harvard graduates who were commissioned late Wednesday morning (June 3). Five are new officers in the U.S. Army and three in the U.S. Marine Corps.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Seceding from the secessionists

    Deep in Civil War Mississippi, where manicured plantations gave way to wild swampland and thick pine forests, a young white man named Newton Knight led a ragtag band of guerilla fighters against the Confederate Army. His story is one of personal bravery and unwillingness to adhere to the secessionist movement that all but surrounded him.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Scholar makes robots that detect land mines

    On Oct. 10, 2005 — he remembers the date exactly — Thrishantha Nanayakkara was driving down a country road, headed for a science workshop at Jaffna Central College, a high school in the far north of Sri Lanka. The event was designed to distract potential child soldiers from the allure of war.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    How’d the Russians get the H-bomb?

    Ever hear of Elugelab? Until Oct. 31, 1952, it was an island on Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. Then it vanished, consumed in the fireball of the world’s first hydrogen bomb.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Newsmakers

    Liu wins Wendell scholarship; Nye, Walt, and Ruggie recognized by Trip; Witzel receives recognition; CID awards Quadir prize; Koven-Matasy ’10 named Beinecke Scholar; Cheng named to USA Today All-USA College Academic Team; Satcher to give Richmond Lecture; Allison to receive NAS award

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Remembering the ‘American War’ of the ’60s

    How do nations remember? In part, they remember through monuments — public art designed to capture a national memory and carry it through the ages.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Petraeus addresses John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum

    Gen. David H. Petraeus, chief of the United States Central Command, spoke at Harvard April 21, offering his perspective on leadership and lessons learned in Iraq, and his take on the United States’ strategy for the future security of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Room for optimism after Gaza

    A capacity crowd at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) this week (Feb. 11) got to see a scaled-down, toned-down version of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Instead of stones and rockets, words flew. Instead of despair, there was at least a glimmer of hope.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Project on Soviet Social System goes online

    or decades, the Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System (HPSSS) has been a major source of information for researchers analyzing the Soviet Union between World War I and World War II. Due to its archaic and often-confusing indexing system, though, the HPSSS has also been a source of frustration for researchers trying to comb…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Tobey named senior fellow at Belfer Center

    William H. Tobey, deputy administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation at the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) from 2006 to 2009, was named a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s (HKS) Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. There he will work with the center’s nuclear team.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Women leaders talk about international security

    A panel discussion at the Harvard Kennedy School’s (HKS) John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum Wednesday (Jan. 14) addressed the question “Will President-elect Obama’s Security Policy Be Inclusive?” — that is, how can women’s global leadership help to shape the new administration’s security goals?

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    War Stories: Inside Campaign 2008 at the Institute of Politics

    No one will ever confuse the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at the Harvard Kennedy School with Gillette Stadium. But the forum was host Thursday evening (Dec. 11) to two of the undisputed rock stars of American political campaigns: David Axelrod and David Plouffe, chief strategist and manager, respectively, for Barack Obama’s successful campaign for…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    ‘Is Afghanistan Lost?’

    At a panel discussion Monday at the Harvard Kennedy School, Maleeha Lodhi evoked Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat to describe the situation on the ground in Afghanistan.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Images of terror through the eyes of children

    Basma was 8 when Janjaweed fighters on horseback swept into her village in the Darfur region of Sudan. Above them, helicopter gunships joined in the attack.

    3 minutes