By Mihir Gupta
Most professors at Harvard College don’t face monetary pressure to advocate certain viewpoints. The scholars teaching our classes say what they truly believe, whether it is that Reagan-era economics are fundamentally sound, or that folklore and mythology are actually relevant. Elsewhere in the University, however, monetary considerations are increasingly jeopardizing academic freedom. The [...]
Recent reports indicate that Harvard’s endowment has already suffered a 22% decline, with an additional 8% projected decrease by the end of this fiscal year. In response to the economic crisis’ toll on Harvard’s funding, the university has instituted a slowdown of its construction projects in Allston, a hiring freeze, and a reduction in the [...]
By Betty Rosen
I remember February’s Knesset elections as a time of a held breath, a time when the mechanics of Israeli politics seemed to threaten the optimism of those, like me, who had been hopeful that real progress in the arena of Middle East peace was about to take place. Like so many other Americans, [...]
By Tyler Brandon
I was feeling fairly optimistic about my trip to Beijing. At least until the plane suddenly landed with a loud thud. Weren’t we still flying amidst the clouds, thousands of feet in the air? I quickly scolded myself for my naïveté. Those “clouds” were thick billows of disgusting white haze. [...]
By Idriss Fofana
There are few worse insults in American politics than being deemed a “socialist.” Indeed, McCain’s supporters used it during the election campaign to paint Barack Obama as a dangerous radical leftist. And yet, in the American political lexicon, there exists a superlative to this term: a “European socialist.” For years, Europe has entertained [...]
By Dylan Matthews
Let’s face it: the Senate sucks. And not just this Senate in particular—there is an intrinsic, institutional suckiness that pervades the upper house of Congress. It’s uneven in its democratic representation of constituents. Wyoming and California have 0.175 percent and 12.1 percent of the U.S. population respectively, but each gets an equal 2 [...]
By Anna Yeung
The Great Equalizer
“It’s always a kick to see trust fund babies deal with sharing a room half the size of my single,” a friend once noted.
I first noticed the breadth of Harvard’s financial aid initiative through the housing lottery. Legacies end up bunking with first-generation college students, and globetrotting internationals with students from [...]
By Madeleine Schwartz
“One second,” Rose Styron tells me. “I just have to call Carlos Fuentes.” Telephone conversations with the world’s most famous writers are nothing new for Styron, a fellow at the IOP this spring. As a founding member of Amnesty International USA, the human rights activist and poet has spent the past forty years [...]
By Joe Hodgkin
BOSTON – Since President Barack Obama took the oath of office in January and lifted restrictions on stem-cell research, the nation’s laboratories have been moving forward apace with their micropipette-ready projects. According to a scientist who has spoken on conditions of anonymity, the first batch of Scalopus anthropomorphus, a mole-human chimera formed [...]