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Articles by Whooli Chen
3 adventure-filled illustrated books for children and adults, too Original
Summer is winding down and the kids are heading back to school, but there are still plenty of reasons to want to get away from, well, everything right now. The most convenient journey, however, might be into the pages of a richly illustrated book. We gathered up three intrepid titles for children and those (cough) a little older to point the way to adventures still to be had this season. “Exploring Gotham City: An Illustrated Guide” by Matthew K.
The New Natural
What do you consider natural? What’s beautiful to you? These questions may sound trite but they’re fraught enough that any one person’s answer will reveal a good deal about how they see the world. Our conceptions of nature and beauty are heavily constructed, but that hasn’t stopped them from evolving in tandem, and being constantly renegotiated by prevailing technologies and attitudes. How has this spectrum evolved in our lifetimes?
| Harvard Magazine
We create ourselves out of the stories we tell about our lives, stories that impose purpose and meaning on experiences that often seem random and discontinuous. As we scrutinize our own past in the effort to explain ourselves to ourselves, we discover ? or invent ? consistent motivations, characteristic patterns, fundamental values, a sense of self. Fashioned out of memories, our stories become our identities. Historians tell stories, too.
Harvard President Drew Faust to Step Down in 2018
Drew Gilpin Faust, who assumed office as Harvard’s twenty-eighth president on July 1, 2007, announced today that she would conclude her service at the end of the next academic year, June 30, 2018.
Library of Congress names Harvard alumna Tracy K. Smith as new Poet Laureate
TRACY K. SMITH ’94 has been named the new U.S. Poet Laureate by the Library of Congress, succeeding Juan Felipe Herrera. While the role doesn’t carry many specific official duties, it has traditionally involved raising awareness of, and increasing access to, poetry. “I am excited about the kinds of social divides that poetry may be able not just to cross but to mend,” Smith said in an interview with the library.
Fred Glimp, a Harvard legend, dies at 91
Idaho high-school graduate Fred Glimp was serving in the Army Air Corps in Germany after World War II when he decided to “take a whack at Harvard” under the GI Bill. “I didn’t think I’d get in,” he told journalist David McClintick ’62 in an interview for this magazine in 1997. He did.
The Forty-Year Fight
“I thought every college had an ethnic-studies program,” says Itzel Vasquez-Rodriguez ’17. She dreamed of pursuing Chicano studies in college, and says she was “shocked to learn that Harvard not only doesn’t have Chicano studies, they don’t even have an ethnic-studies department!” She applied and enrolled nevertheless—and began advocating for academic opportunities in her dream field. Perhaps her efforts could make it an option for future students.
John Manning Appointed Dean of Harvard Law School
As Harvard Law School (HLS) prepares to celebrate its bicentennial year, it will do so under new leadership. President Drew Faust today named Bromley professor of law John F. Manning, who has been deputy dean, as dean, effective July 1. The appointment of Manning, a graduate of Harvard College (1982) and HLS (1985), continues the tradition of selecting the school’s leader from within its faculty ranks.
“Jump In, the Water’s Great!”
Underneath the tent in Greenleaf Yard last Friday, Radcliffe alumnae, family, and friends huddled together (in spite of a persistent drizzle) to try to answer a question that has been asked throughout the spring term and at this year’s Commencement exercises: Is there still hope for integrity in journalism?
Embracing Difficult Circumstances
“It’s one of life’s ironies that high character is formed at the bottom,” David Bradley, M.B.A. ’77, announced in his Class Day address at Harvard Business School (HBS) on Wednesday. Bradley is a man of many careers. After interning at the White House and earning his M.B.A. from Harvard and a J.D. from Georgetown, he founded The Advisory Board Company, which provides industry research to companies. He then became publisher of The Atlantic and owner of its parent company, Atlantic Media.
Public Health As Aspiration
Opening the Commencement ceremony at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health (HSPH), Dean Michelle Williams recognized a graduating student, Mohammad Al Safadi, who could not attend. “The programs he oversaw served refugees, earthquake victims, and others in desperate need of care,” she said.
Harvard Commencement 2017
Concluding the dinner for honorary-degree recipients in Annenberg Hall Wednesday night, President Drew Faust directed the assembled tuxedoes and evening gowns to be “stalwart” on the morrow, observing the old observation (and hoping the old hope), “It never rains on Harvard Commencement—even when it rains.” Thursday morning, as dawn arrived not in a blaze of sunlight but in a gradual lessening of the gray overhead, the dour National Weather Service forecast for Cambridge called for “Rain,...
“To Lead Must Necessarily Mean to Serve”
Seventy Commencements after George C. Marshall, a five-star U.S. general turned diplomat and U.S. secretary of state, outlined the economic plan for rebuilding post-World War II Europe named in his honor, six Harvard seniors took their own oaths to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States” and “well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office” upon which they were about to enter as commissioned officers in the armed services.
Harvard Commencement Regalia New 2017
Harvard, nearing its four-hundredth anniversary, is encrusted with traditions—never more so than during its Commencement rituals.
“Your Job Is to Disturb the Universe”
Former secretary of state John Kerry lingered casually in John F. Kennedy Park, chatting with colleagues and admirers, before ascending the stage to deliver this year’s Commencement address to graduates of Harvard Kennedy School. Dean Douglas Elmendorf introduced the former soldier as a public servant who had distinguished himself first as a dissident regarding American military strategy in Southeast Asia.
Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences honors its Centennial Medalists
The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Centennial Medal, first awarded in 1989 on the occasion of the school’s hundredth anniversary, honors alumni who have made contributions to society that emerged from their graduate study at Harvard. It is the highest honor the Graduate School bestows, and awardees include some of Harvard’s most accomplished alumni.
2017 Baccalaureate urges the importance of active looking and listening
“You have stood up and stood out,” President Drew Faust told the graduating seniors of 2017 in the opening frame of her May 23 Baccalaureate address. “The value of being noticed, especially on social media, has been a powerful force in your lives.” Speaking in the renovated, and now air-conditioned, Memorial Church (“Harvard’s first air-conditioned Baccalaureate in its 381 years”), Faust was setting her audience up for a swerve.
White House awards Barry Mazur, Harvard mathematician, National Medal of Science
Gade University Professor Barry Mazur will be awarded the National Medal of Science—one of 12 honorands who will be recognized in a ceremony at the White House early this year. The medal, the nation's highest recognition for scientists and mathematicians, will be conferred by President Barack Obama. Mazur is a leading number theorist. For a review of his book Imagining Numbers, read “On Mathematical Imagination,” from this magazine’s archives.
A Preview of Commencement 2017
Commencement 2017 is upon us. Be sure to check Harvard Magazine throughout the week for coverage of Commencement events across Harvard‘s schools—including addresses from Mark Zuckerberg, Sally Yates, Sherry Turkle, and more. 11 a.m., Phi Beta Kappa Literary Exercises with social psychologist Sherry Turkle and poet Mark Doty. 11 a.m., ROTC comissioning ceremony with U.S. Air Force General John Hyten. 2 p.m., Harvard College Class Day with former U.S. vice president Joe Biden.
New Harvard Overseers and HAA Elected Directors Announced
A new Harvard School of Public Health study suggests people naturally regulate their coffee consumption. March-April 2015
Harvard baseball player Josh Ellis is profiled
On his last day in a Harvard baseball uniform, Josh Ellis ’17—senior captain, starting catcher, and practiced base-stealer—stole home. It was the second game of a doubleheader against division rival Dartmouth, on a wet and chilly afternoon that had spectators at O’Donnell Field huddling under umbrellas and later waiting out an hour-long lightning delay.
From the Archives: The Ultimate Commencement Address
Seventy Commencements ago, in the wake of World War II, the United States embraced both its role as leader of, and forceful engagement with, the world. The most important expression of that perspective, an announcement of lasting historical importance, was the Marshall Plan: the commitment to support and reconstruct Europe. It was enunciated by then Secretary of State George C. Marshall, who was an honorand on June 5, 1947. In 1997, Harvard Magazine editor emeritus John T.
Harvard Discloses Leaders’ Compensation
The University today released its tax return for nonprofit organizations (Form 990) for 2015 (covering the tax year from July 1, 2015, to June 30, 2016—Harvard’s fiscal year 2016). As is its practice, Harvard has simultaneously disseminated information on the compensation paid to the president and chief executive officer of Harvard Management Company (HMC, which is responsible for investing the endowment) and to its highest-paid portfolio managers.
Reimagining Cabot Library
Prior to its redesign, the Cabot Science Library had opaque windows, uninviting first and second floors, and a lack of space for students to spend any meaningful amount of time. Last month, the space re-opened with an entirely new design and a focus on providing students with a space to socialize, study, and organize meetings.
Studying Zika | Harvard Magazine
To understand the outbreak of a disease like Zika, and ultimately to fight it, researchers must work on multiple levels. There are questions of molecules and chemical processes: how does the virus infect a cell, and what components provoke an immune response that can be harnessed for treatments and vaccines? On a larger scale, there are questions about populations. How does a pathogen discovered in Uganda spread from French Polynesia to Brazil and the Caribbean?
An Unpredictable Path to Student Unionization
Harvard has filed an objection to the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) tentative decision last month to call for a new election in the University’s graduate-student union case. From here, the path remains unclear: a new election could take place as early as next fall, or, if the case gets tied up in more legal hearings, much later, or not at all.
In “Renga for Obama,” an exquisite corpse and a literary wake
The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem,” Walt Whitman claimed in the preface to Leave of Grass. He went on: “Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their poets shall.” Donald Trump’s election seems to have galvanized many American writers into fulfilling Whitman’s ideal.
A Snapshot of Environmental Sustainability at Harvard
In celebration of Earth Day, on April 22, Harvard has released its annual sustainability report for 2016. Although the most notable achievement—a 30 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions since 2006—was described earlier in this magazine, the full report details progress on other fronts, such as human health, ecosystem management, and campus operations. Did you know that there has been a 24 percent reduction in campus water use since the 2006 fiscal year?
Grad Student Union Revote?
Harvard may have to hold a new graduate-student union election if the final outcome of its November election does not result in a victory for the union, a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) report ruled this week, after months of deliberations on the election. According to the ruling, the University did not provide, prior to the election, a complete list of students who were eligible to vote; some eligible voters were omitted.
“Social Justice in Linguistics”
Kathryn davidson’s role in bringing an ASL class to Harvard, on one level, was incidental. The students calling for the class needed a faculty member’s signature, and an ASL researcher happened to arrive at the right moment. On another level, it mirrors the much more substantial relationship between the linguistic and deaf communities.
A Robotic Fix for Heart Failure
Harvard scientists announced today that they have developed a robotic device made from soft, biomimetic materials that could one day restore the ability to pump blood in patients with heart failure. The invention, demonstrated in Yorkshire pigs, represents a pioneering use of soft robotics internally, although a great deal of further development, miniaturization, and testing will be needed before it could be used in humans.
Toni Morrison concludes Norton Lecture series on race and literature
“These lectures are hard for me,” Toni Morrison, Litt.D. ’89, told her Sanders Theatre audience at her penultimate Norton Lecture.
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