Editors' Choice
Up Close With Remy the Cat
“He’s our cat, but he’s every bit a cat that belongs to the Harvard community as well."
‘A Very Fraught Moment’: How Elizabeth Holmes Joined the Harvard Medical School Board of Fellows
In the aftermath of the exposé and months of investigations that followed, the Board grappled with an internal debate about whether to keep Holmes “on the board for a while out of fairness and due process” or request her resignation in order to “limit potential institutional reputational damage."
The Adams House Raft Race Sunk in The Charles River’s Past
To construct their rafts, racers collected materials from across campus. Some made intricate designs, while others threw together a hodgepodge of items.
Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Death Masks
Along with William James, Harvard’s archives also contain the death masks of Dante Alighiere, James Joyce, Edward Estlin Cummings, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Walt Whitman.
A Pathetic Aesthetic
The aestheticization — dare I say fetishization — of female pain reaffirms the conditions that made girls sad in the first place. Simply put, the Sad Girl reeks of complacency.
‘1-2-3, A.D. Tree, That’s How Easy Love Can Be’
You blushed — your leaves were turning red as the weather got colder. You dropped a leaf down to me and I held it like a hand. We agreed that what we had was real — no situationship, no post-party hookup. We agreed not to see other people.
The Road to Reclamation, Reconciliation, and Reparations: A Conversation With Public Historian Hannah Scruggs
Public historian Hannah Scruggs sat with Fifteen Minutes to discuss historical sites, descendants of slavery, and Harvard's road to remedying its difficult past. “Public history can be a powerful space for connection and healing,” she says.
In Defense of Colleen Hoover: Intellectual Snobbery at Harvard
My shame of being found reading Colleen Hoover stemmed from a culture of intellectual snobbery — feeling superior and prideful about the type of culture you consume. It’s the person who prides themselves on their knowledge of “classical” literature, listing off the last names of authors such as John Milton, Charles Dickens, and Jane Austen as if they are family friends.
Learning to Fail
Is it vulnerable or honest about the reality of being at this school? Or is it playing to an aesthetic standard of what a Harvard student is supposed to be: personality, friendships, and academic success, all in one? These performances feed into a perception, however misguided, of students at Harvard and other elite universities as universally capable and flawless super-students, without even the possibility of failure.
Bearing Witness to Climate Change
This isn’t just any aged tree — this is what is known as a witness tree. Witness trees are, by definition, any tree that has experienced historical events through its significant age and location. Many well-known witness trees were present for major Civil War battles. In the case of the one at the Harvard Forest, these historical events have less to do with military and politics and more to do with the climate and ecology of the forest.
Christopher Nowinski on Concussions
Part of the reason Nowinski cares about this advocacy is that he did not receive adequate education about concussions when he was younger. “I had likely been getting concussions throughout my whole athletics career, I had just never said anything because I didn’t think that the symptoms were worth mentioning,”
Northern Lights Come to Cambridge
Welcome to “Borealis,” the art installation that served as the centerpiece of this year’s Cambridge Science Festival — a weeklong celebration of science, technology, engineering, art, and math.
Zadie Smith Saw This Coming
Yet as I read “On Beauty,” her wonder of a 2005 novel, I couldn’t shake the one central mystery it posed: does Harvard by any other name sound as sweet?
Salem, City With Three Faces
Salem doesn’t dictate a singular impression to its visitors. It offers multiple entry points: to shop, to learn, to reflect, to live.
Building a Bridge2AI
The burgeoning field of AI in medicine comes with a host of potential ethical challenges.
The Fight to Save All of Cambridge's Trees
Some local activists are concerned that even with bolstered community support, Cambridge still lacks the infrastructure to fully take care of its trees.
Pawpaws to the People!
Each year, more people are trying pawpaws for the first time and falling in love with their tropical taste and vogue mysteriousness. But the pawpaw isn’t new, and it’s not going anywhere.
Fleeting Connections with George D. Vaill, the Free Advice Guy
Vaill says the questions people ask range from lighthearted to weighty. He’s often asked things like, “What are you doing here?” “How should I handle my blind date tonight?” “How do I find a boy?” “Should I change my major?”
One Night at the SEC
I jumped at the idea of spending a night there — partly for the meme, partly for the lure of experiential reporting, and partly to feel more connected to the colossal construction I only ever visit for math class.
Do Blondes Have More Fun?
Bleaching my hair brought me closer than I’d ever been to feeling beautiful — and when you get so close, it’s impossible not to want more.
Punching Up? Porcellian Punch Class Attempts to Unionize
“You know, we see all these labor movements on TikTok, and we say to ourselves, we are being exploited just like them. I didn’t spend six years at Groton to do my own dry cleaning.”
Fifteen Questions: Diana Eck on Interfaith Dialogue, Lowell’s Russian Bells, and Her Favorite Poetry
The Comparative Religion professor sat down to discuss religious pluralism in the United States as well as on Harvard’s campus. “It is not the godless Harvard that people used to speak of, in the old days,” she says.