Conversations
Fifteen Questions: Orlando Patterson on the Sociology of Slavery, Advising the Jamaican Prime Minister, and Cricket
Historical and cultural sociologist Orlando Patterson sat down to discuss his upbringing and sociology research. “I didn’t get into academia just for the scholarship,” he says. “My work was motivated by the need to understand Jamaica.”
Fifteen Questions: Ian Miller on Zoos, Climate Change, and the Quad
The historian and Cabot House Faculty Dean Ian J. Miller sat down to discuss his research on empire and energy in modern Japan and East Asia and life as a faculty dean. “When you stand somewhere else, you look at the world through someone else’s eyes or you work with historical documents, reading into those powerful texts, it can be empowering,” he says.
Dusty Three
Grundmeier points out one of his favorite thank you cards, which is signed by all the students in one of his math classes and reads “We Love You Dusty.” Gifts like these are littered throughout Grundmeier’s office.
Beloved Math Lecturer Dusty Grundmeier Bids Farewell to Harvard
Math lecturer Dusty Grundmeier is leaving Harvard at the semester’s end. Known for his empathy and engaging lectures, he’s something of a legend among students on campus. We sat down with Grundmeier and interviewed students to explore what makes his teaching special.
Aliyah Collins Is Eco-Healing
Collins founded the Eco-Healing Project last fall to “help HBCU students heal and recover from the impact of climate disasters.”
Tommy Orange
In 2018, Orange published his debut novel “There There,” which tells stories about Native American characters and their relationships with their identities. The novel received great acclaim, including the Hemingway Foundation/PEN award, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and recognition as a Pulitzer Prize Finalist.
Dusty 2
Photos of Grundmeier’s wife, three children, and cat Albie sit in frames atop a box in the corner, as well as in decorative transparent cubes on the table before us. “There’s my daughter on Halloween. This is on the Tea Party Boat in Boston. I got my cat here, Albie,” Grundmeier says. “I think he was more popular than I was.”
Dusty 1
Dusty Grundmeier, the professor for Math 22A and 22B, is set to leave Harvard at the end of the semester to join the math department at Ohio State University. His unique teaching philosophy and compassionate approach have earned him a legendary status among students on campus.
Aliyah Collins
Aliyah S. Collins, now a student at the Harvard Divinity School, notes that there is a unique, intersectional impact of climate disasters for HBCU students, especially those who are low-income. “A lot of students face or experience a lot of PTSD, stress, depression, just having to navigate the climate disaster,” Collins says.
Valeria Luiselli Portrait
Valeria Luiselli is a visiting professor of ethnicity, indigeneity, and migration in the English Department. Luiselli is the author of several books including “Lost Children Archive,” which was longlisted for the Booker Prize.
Tamarra James-Todd
Associate professor of Environmental Reproductive Epidemiology at Harvard’s School of Public Health Tamarra James-Todd focuses on understanding how environmental exposures adversely affect women’s reproductive health.
Fifteen Questions: Valeria Luiselli on the Best Novel That Has Ever Been Written, Her Friend Crush, and the Perils of an MFA
The author sat down with Fifteen Minutes to discuss writing and teaching. “How do we reshape the view of the migrant as an inherently victimized figure or as an intruder of sorts by thinking, for example, of migration in its kind of heroic arc?” she says. “Of the migration story not as a tragedy, but as a form of epic?"
Lena Chen’s Intimate Internet
In the intimacy of Chen’s performance art, I see the nascent question of what desire, care, and closeness can look like in an increasingly online world. Chen is an artist who speaks into the future: the future of sex, the future of technology, the future that implicates everyone interacting on the internet.
Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: Tamarra James-Todd on the Hidden Toxins in Black Hair Care
But with products filled with unpronounceable chemicals like linalool methylparaben and methylisothiazolinone, one might begin to wonder: What exactly are Black women putting in their hair, and what does it mean for their health?
Lena Chen Lena Chen
Lena Chen ’09 is a performance artist who spearheaded the creation of OnlyBans. While at Harvard, she wrote the blog Sex and the Ivy, which documented her sex life.
Fifteen Questions: Pardis Sabeti on LS1B, Computational Genetics, and Holiday Cards
Biologist Pardis C. Sabeti sat down with Fifteen Questions to talk about the famed introductory genetics class, the quirks of her lab, and being a woman in science. “A successful life is not one that is free of setbacks. It’s defined by setbacks,” she says.
William Cheng
William Cheng, a professor of music at Dartmouth College and a 2022–23 fellow at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, loves video games. He has studied and played them through a complicated and trailblazing career in academia, where he says that caring for the “whole person” is often “perceived to be extracurricular and kind of secondary.”
William Cheng, Scholar of Music and Video Games
William Cheng, a professor of music at Dartmouth College and a 2022–23 fellow at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, loves video games. He has studied and played them through a complicated and trailblazing career in academia, where he says that caring for the “whole person” is often “perceived to be extracurricular and kind of secondary.”
Noah Feldman on Constitutions, Content Regulation, and Boaty McBoatface
Feldman, who specializes in constitutional law, draws upon established political systems to tackle the emerging, ever-changing domain of the digital world. The man who advised constitutional processes in Iraq and Tunisia now wants to develop systems of governance for social media platforms.
Noah Feldman
Noah R. Feldman ’92, who FM called “Professor Fashion” in 2011, discusses social media, tech governance, and his time on Twitter.
Fifteen Questions: Steven Levitsky on Democracy, Latin America, and the Mets
The political scientist sat down with Fifteen Minutes to discuss threats to democracy in the United States and Latin America. “Democracy is always an unsettled system,” he says. “It’s always going to be open to threats and so it requires a tireless fight.”
Steve Levitsky Portrait
Steven Levitsky is a Harvard professor of Government and Latin American Studies who serves as the director of the David Rockefeller Center of Latin American Studies. He co-authored “How Democracies Die” with fellow Harvard Government professor Daniel Ziblatt.
Rebecca Hall Illustration
Rebecca Hall with the original illustration of one of the pages of "Wake." In 2018, she began working on the graphic novel with Hugo Martínez, an illustrator, after crowdfunding $9,000 on Kickstarter.
Rebecca Hall Wake
Rebecca Hall holds up her graphic novel, "Wake," which has been translated into French, German, Turkish, and Japanese. Hall remains in a state of disbelief at just how much her book resonated with people across the world.