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Harvard University

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A woman of the Mi’kmaq Nation stands in front of a lake.

Tribes in Maine Spent Decades Fighting to Rebury Ancestral Remains. Harvard Resisted Them at Nearly Every Turn.

The university’s Peabody Museum exploited loopholes to prevent repatriation to the Wabanaki people while still staying in compliance with NAGPRA.
by Mary Hudetz, Ash Ngu via ProPublica on December 4, 2023
Unabomber escorted by courthouse security.

Before He Was the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski was a Mind-Control Test Subject

As a Harvard student, Kaczynski was part of an experiment backed by the Central Intelligence Agency that one author argued shaped his worldviews.
by Bryan Pietsch via Retropolis on June 11, 2023
Photo of gate at Harvard University.

Black Students At Harvard Have Always Resisted Racism

Faculty and staff once owned slaves, and professors taught racial eugenics.
by Harvard University Presidential Committee on the Legacy of Slavery via Teen Vogue on November 2, 2022
A gate opening to the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Mass.

Harvard Leaders and Staff Enslaved 79 People, University Finds

The school said it had benefited from slave-generated wealth and practiced racial discrimination.
by Nick Anderson, Susan Svrluga via Washington Post on April 26, 2022
Members of the Harvard branch of the KKK pose for 1924 graduation photo at the foot of John Harvard Statue

The Crimson Klan

The KKK was clearly present at Harvard. But the university rarely mentions the 20th century in its attempts to reckon with its past.
by Simon J. Levien via The Harvard Crimson on March 29, 2021
Black-and-white photograph of Louis Agassiz sitting in chair, looking through a magnifying glass at a sea urchin.

Louis Agassiz, Under a Microscope

The two prevailing historical visions of Louis Agassiz — one gentle and reverential, the other rigid and bigoted — may simply be two sides of the same coin.
by Saima S. Iqbal via The Harvard Crimson on March 18, 2021
Harvard University in the colonial era.

Getting Into Harvard Was Once All About Social Rank (Not Grades)

In the 17th and 18th centuries, students at America’s elite universities were treated differently based on the social stature of their parents.
by Erin Blakemore via HISTORY on March 12, 2019

Before It Conquered the World, Facebook Conquered Harvard

On Facebook's 15th anniversary, Harvard students and faculty reflect on being the first users of Earth's largest social network.
by Alexis C. Madrigal via The Atlantic on February 4, 2019

Harvard’s Eugenics Era

When academics embraced scientific racism, immigration restrictions, and the suppression of “the unfit”.
by Adam S. Cohen via Harvard Magazine on March 1, 2016
Ted Kaczynski being led by two law enforcement officers.

Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber

Purposely brutalizing psychological experiments may have confirmed Theodore Kaczynski’s still-forming belief in the evil of science while he was in college.
by Alston Chase via The Atlantic on June 1, 2000
Foggy hills in Appalachia.

Love in the Time of Hillbilly Elegy: On JD Vance’s Appalachian Grift

Justin B. Wymer knows a snake when he sees one.
by Justin B. Wymer via Literary Hub on August 27, 2024
Chalkboard in a classroom.

What Are You Going to Do With That?

The future of college in the asset economy.
by Erik Baker via Harper’s on July 23, 2024
A West Village, New York pizza restaurant.

What Should Econ 101 Courses Teach Students Today?

Why introductory economics courses continued to teach zombie ideas from before economics became an empirical discipline.
by Walter Frick via Aeon on June 7, 2024

Friends and Enemies

Marty Peretz and the travails of American liberalism.
by Jeet Heer via The Nation on May 14, 2024
Sign reading "Welcome to the People's University for Palestine" at Harvard protest encampment

The Real Scandal of Campus Protest

It’s not that there has been too much student protest. It’s that there has not been much, much more of it.
by Erik Baker via Boston Review on April 25, 2024
Claudine Gay.

First They Came for Harvard

The right’s long and all-too-unanswered war on liberal institutions claims a big one.
by Rick Perlstein via The American Prospect on January 10, 2024
Demonstrators with signs supporting affirmative action.
partner

Why the Supreme Court Endorsed, Then Limited Affirmative Action

The Supreme Court considers new arguments challenging admissions practices that colleges use to select a diverse student body.
via Retro Report on July 25, 2023
Chains with ivy on it

Endowed by Slavery

Harvard made headlines by announcing that it would devote $100 million to remedying “the harms of the university’s ties to slavery.”
by Andrew Delbanco via New York Review of Books on June 2, 2022
JFK and Jackie Kennedy with wedding party

You’ll Miss Us When We’re Gone

The rise and fall of the WASP.
by Lewis H. Lapham, Michael Knox Beran via Lapham’s Quarterly on May 3, 2022
Thomas Paine

Reframing the Story of Harvard’s Humanist Chaplaincy

The time when Harvard made an atheist their head chaplain.
by Leigh Eric Schmidt via Arc: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera on November 2, 2021
Artwork by Alanna Fields of an enslaved individual.

The Dark Underside of Representations of Slavery

Will the Black body ever have the opportunity to rest in peace?
by Latria Graham via The Atlantic on September 16, 2021
Students at Colby College

Harvard–Riverside, Round Trip

In the contemporary United States, higher education does more to exaggerate than relieve class and cultural divisions.
by Mitchell L. Stevens via Public Books on August 11, 2021

It’s Time to Break Up the Ivy League Cartel

Democracy requires something more than a handful of super-rich universities.
by Matt Stoller, Sam Haselby via The Chronicle of Higher Education on May 28, 2021
Painting of white men taking enslaved Africans off boat on a beach.

Who Owns the Evidence of Slavery’s Violence?

A lawsuit against Harvard University demands the return of an ancestor’s stolen image.
by Thomas A. Foster via Public Seminar on September 10, 2020

The Challenge of Preserving the Historical Record of #MeToo

Archivists face a battery of technical and ethical questions with few precedents.
by Nora Caplan-Bricker via The New Yorker on March 11, 2019
Graphic symbolizing a college stopping African Americans from entering the door.

What We Get Wrong About Affirmative Action

The lawsuit against Harvard forces us to talk about Asian Americans' role in the racial equity debate.
via Vox on December 10, 2018

Is Elizabeth Warren Native American?

What the DNA controversy reveals about race, identity politics, and the Native American present.
by Claire Bond Potter via Public Seminar on October 17, 2018
Bottles of powdered pigments.

Treasures from the Color Archive

The historic pigments in the Forbes Collection include the esoteric, the expensive, and the toxic.
by Simon Schama via The New Yorker on August 27, 2018
original

A World in a Box

Harvard digitizes two centuries of colonial history.
by Benjamin Breen on November 15, 2017

By Retiring a Seal, Harvard Wages War on the Dead — but to What End?

Rather than censuring the legacies of our ancestors, we should work to make our descendants proud.
by Ted Gup via Washington Post on March 18, 2016
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