During the month of October, the A.R.T. will present free play-readings on stage at the Loeb Drama Center, featuring new work by dynamic young American writers: Dan LeFranc (recipient of the 2010 New York Times Outstanding Playwright Award), Angela Sun (winner of the the 2010 Phyllis Anderson Contest, an annual competition open to all Harvard University students),…

Bob Giles, curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard for the past decade, will retire at the end of the academic year in June 2011. “It is not easy to leave a great institution and the wonderful people who make it so, but this is a good time for my wife, Nancy, and…

Gender equity will be the biggest moral challenge the international community will face in the next century, according to Nicholas D. Kristof, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, who visited the Harvard Kennedy School on Sept. 27. “In the nineteenth century, the central moral challenge for the world was slavery and in the twentieth century the…

The Center for Public Leadership (CPL) at Harvard Kennedy School has named criminal justice system activist Susan Burton this year’s recipient of the Gleitsman Citizen Activist Award for her work empowering formerly incarcerated women to reenter society, maintain their sobriety, and reunite with their children. The award and $125,000 prize, bestowed biannually to a leader…

Harvard Business School (HBS) recently bestowed its most important honor, the Alumni Achievement Award, on five distinguished graduates: Susan L. Decker, former president of Yahoo! Inc.; James L. Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co.; Allan W.B. Gray, chairman of Orbis Investment Management, Ltd.; James A. Lovell, commander of NASA’s Apollo 13 lunar…

Effective Monday, Oct. 4, the hours of operation for the Harvard Telephone Operators will change. The new weekday schedule will be 8:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. The office will continue to be closed on Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays. Weekend callers will have the option of using the voice recognition/automated directory assistance to be connected to…

The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University has announced a $1 million gift from the Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Court.  The gift will be used to launch a new graduate fellowship that will support emerging leaders from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) while advancing the mission of the School’s Middle East Initiative,…

Today the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, announced 173 government programs selected for its newly created Bright Ideas program. In its inaugural year, Bright Ideas is designed to recognize and share creative government initiatives around the country with interested public sector, nonprofit, and…

The student-created sOccket was among the winners of Popular Mechanics sixth annual Breakthrough Awards, which recognizes the innovators and products poised to change the world in the fields of technology, medicine, aviation, environmental engineering, and more. “From soccer balls that generate light to cell phones that diagnose medical conditions, our diverse, inspired winners are making…

As President Drew Faust threw out the ceremonial first pitch during Harvard Night at Boston’s Fenway Park on Sept. 22, thousands of spectators  were busy throwing out their recyclable plastic cups and bottles in the bags held by 30 Harvard students who spent the evening volunteering for the Red Sox Green Team.  The students, the…

On Monday (Sept. 27) Nobel Peace Prize recipient (2008) and former President of Finland (1994-2000), Martti Ahtisaari will be honored with the 2010 Great Negotiator Award presented by the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School’s Future of Diplomacy Project at Spangler Auditorium, Harvard Business School. The Great Negotiator event…

Security expert Richard A. Clarke offers stark examples in arguing that the threats of cyberwar and cyberespionage are not just science fiction hype: –Israeli F15 and F16s screamed across the Syrian border in September 2007 and bombed a nuclear reactor construction site, but Syrian radar screens showed nothing but peaceful green. The Israelis had hacked…

The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting have joined forces to support international reporting initiatives with a special focus on global health coverage. The partnership will also bring Pulitzer Center journalists to Harvard University for presentations and discussions on underreported international stories and provide an annual workshop for…

Students aren’t the only ones getting good grades for all their hard work.  The entire Harvard University community recently received high grades for its commitment to sustainability from two prominent national rating organizations. The Princeton Review ranked Harvard as one of 18 schools in its 2011 Green Rating Honor Roll for receiving one of the…

The study began a few years ago when Karen Hussar, Ed.M.’06, Ed.D.’07, then a doctoral student, became interested in children who chose to become vegetarians at a young age (6-10) despite being raised in meat-eating families. To what extent, she wondered, was this decision based on morals, not health? In September, Professor Paul Harris, Hussar’s…

New findings by Harvard Graduate School of Education Assistant Professor Martin West and University of Munich Professor Ludger Woessmann show that competition from private schools improves achievement for both public and private school students, and decreases overall spending on education. The study, which was featured in the August 2010 issue of the Economic Journal, systemically…

Harvard Graduate School of Education Assistant Professor Jon Star recently launched an extensive research project in more than 50 public school districts across Massachusetts focused on improving students’ learning of mathematics by examining how algebra is currently taught in local classrooms. “Algebra is a critically important course for students. Those who succeed in algebra are…

In 1839, Hannah Whitcomb arrived in Tuscarora Village, a small Native American community near Niagara Falls, New York to begin her work as missionary to the Tuscarora Indians. For the next two decades, she lived with the tribe, married one of its chiefs, raised five children, and wrote dozens of letters that chronicle everything from…

The Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) announced a commitment to foster graduate training and research in applied computational science, infusing the SEAS curriculum with new courses and student research opportunities that will focus on the use of computation to power discovery and innovation. The aim of the new effort is to expand…

The Harvard University Center for the Environment welcomes the incoming group of Environmental Fellows for the 2010-12 academic years. These four new fellows will join a group of five scholars who will be beginning the second year of their fellowships. Together, the Environmental Fellows at Harvard form a community of researchers with diverse backgrounds united…

Nine entrepreneurs will join the Harvard Business School (HBS) community during the 2010-2011 academic year as Entrepreneurs-in-Residence (EiR). Sponsored by the School’s Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship, the Entrepreneur-in-Residence program, now in its fifth year, invites accomplished entrepreneurs to HBS to advise MBA students interested in starting companies and work with faculty on research and…

Harvard University announced today (Sept. 22) a new partnership with the cities of Boston and Cambridge designed to bring the world to students — faster and clearer than ever. Harvard will share its access to the super high-speed Internet2 Network connection with Boston and Cambridge schools, granting all 148 public schools in the two cities…

Houghton Library Manuscript Cataloger Michael Austin (left) holds the Academy Award presented to Johnny Green, Class of 1928, for his original composition The Merry Wives of Windsor Overture, a subject in MGM’s Concert Hall series. Austin recently completed a major project to catalog Houghton’s Johnny Green Collection, which consists of thousands of manuscript scores, printed…

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study has appointed Karen Putnam associate dean for advancement, effective Sept. 15. Selected after a nationwide search, Putnam has had a distinguished career in fundraising, beginning with service in the Harvard University Development Office, where her primary responsibility was the Fogg Art Museum. She went on to hold fundraising positions…

In today’s overstimulated society, it’s hard to imagine a time when reading—which we regard as solitary—was seen as a social activity. But for middle- and upper-class women of America’s first Gilded Age (from about 1865 to 1901), reading was social and central. In her book Well-Read Lives: How Books Inspired a Generation of American Women…

The Harvard Graduate School of Education announced the launch of the Harvard EdCast. The weekly series, which will be available on the Harvard University iTunes U page, features a 15-20 minute conversation with thought leaders in the field of education from across the country and around the world. Hosted by Matt Weber, the Harvard EdCast…

It’s time to get those green creative juices flowing. The Harvard Office for Sustainability has announced the application timeline for this year’s round of 2010-11 Student Sustainability Grants, available at www.green.harvard/grants. Now in its second year, the grants program funds on-campus environmental projects by undergraduate and graduate students that contribute to achieving Harvard’s sustainability commitments,…

In a paper published as a cover story in Nature, researchers from Harvard University and MIT have demonstrated that graphene, a surprisingly robust planar sheet of carbon just one-atom thick, can act as an artificial membrane separating two liquid reservoirs. By drilling a tiny pore just a few nanometers in diameter, called a nanopore, in…

On what a native New Englander would deem a quintessential fall day in Massachusetts, CNBC’s “Squawk Box” production team hauled its set from New York City to the lawn of Baker Library last Thursday. Co-hosted by CNBC anchor and correspondent Carl Quintanilla and University Professor Michael Porter, the program focused on the state of U.S.…

On the heels of the Harvard College Library Green Team’s announced target of Green Leaf One certification for all libraries by January 1, two more units have met or surpassed the goal.  Harvard’s Office of Sustainability (OFS) recently recognized Tozzer Library for achieving Green Leaf One and Houghton Library for achieving Green Leaf Four, becoming…