A panel of experts convened Tuesday at the Graduate School of Education to weigh the potential consequences of President Donald Trump’s executive order to dismantle the Department of Education.

A cabinet-level executive branch agency, the department oversees policy, administers federal funding for schools, and ensures equal access to education. It also manages federal student aid programs, including Pell grants, supports research, and collects data. The agency oversees a budget of nearly $80 billion, of which about $34 billion helps low-income students and students with disabilities. It also manages more than $1.6 trillion in student loans.

In the days since the president’s order to “facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return education authority to the states,” the agency, led by Linda McMahon, has canceled research contracts and cut staff by nearly half. Democratic attorneys general, teachers’ unions, and education organizations, among others, have filed 19 separate lawsuits challenging the administration’s education agenda, arguing that the move to close down the agency is an illegal overreach. The department was created by an act of Congress in 1979, and opponents of the Trump order say that shutting it down would also require congressional action.

Educators, students, and families find themselves in a confusing and unsettling environment, said Martin West, Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Education, who moderated the conversation.

Neal McCluskey, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute, favors abolishing the agency and restoring control of public schools to the states, but was critical of the government’s methods.

“My biggest concern is that this is being done so haphazardly — like a bull in a china shop,” he said. “I want to see the Department of Education go away, but if it’s done without any planning, in a way that is haphazard, that is just chaos, I’m afraid that it’ll make it look like what I want is horrendous.”

Andrew Rotherham, co-founder and senior partner at Bellwether, a national educational nonprofit, highlighted the potential fallout of lost funds in high-poverty areas across the country. Through Title I, the department provides financial assistance to schools with high numbers of children from low-income families.

“You’re obviously going to see impacts in high-poverty school districts,” said Rotherham. “In terms of the politics of this, it’s important to remember that that money gets spent in red communities, blue communities, red states, blue states, purple states. Everyone’s affected.”

Catherine Lhamon, a former Ed Department assistant secretary for civil rights, lamented the implications for regional civil rights offices, which are responsible for enforcing protections guaranteed by the Constitution and federal law. Seven of 12 offices have been shuttered, she said.

“That means that fewer than half of the investigators who are struggling to do the work already are now left to do the entire nation’s civil rights enforcement work, and to guarantee that no one experiences discrimination based on race, sex, and disability in schools,” said Lhamon. “When I left on Jan. 20, our staff were carrying on average 50 cases per person, which is an untenable caseload.”

She added: “What we know is that schools are incubators for how to be in the world, how to participate in democracy, and how to be effective in our communities. … We are walking away from six decades of commitments to core protections for who each of us is. I find that terrifying.”

The panelists also voiced concerns about cuts to research administered through the agency’s Institute of Education Sciences, which has seen more than 100 layoffs. Brian Gill, a senior fellow at Mathematica, noted that his organization last month saw the cancelation of several projects contracted by the institute. The long-term effects are a big worry, he said.

“Changes to research aren’t going to have immediate effects in schools,” Gill said. “In the research world, it’s been a big deal. If you care about developing research and new programs in education, and making the schools work better in the long term, this is likely to matter.”

The spread of misinformation online may feel like a modern problem. But more than 600 years ago, Geoffrey Chaucer, author of “The Canterbury Tales,” worried about the same thing.

According to Fernanda García-Oteyza, a Ph.D. candidate in religion at the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, echoes of Chaucer’s Middle-English poem “The House of Fame,” where rumor is depicted as an uncontrollable force of distortion, can be found in Patricia Lockwood’s “No One Is Talking About This” (2021), a contemporary novel about the internet’s ability to alter truth and destroy literary voice.

“Both Lockwood and Chaucer take up questions of poetic authority, creativity, and inspiration, poking at the troubled relationship between reality and fiction, between rumor and fame, diving headfirst into the cacophony of speech that produces them all,” García-Oteyza explained to an audience at Sever Hall.

García-Oteyza was one of nearly two dozen Harvard students who presented at the Medieval Academy of America’s 100th annual meeting in late March. The gathering is a top destination for medievalists worldwide. This time around, more than 800 academics representing 23 countries convened in Harvard Yard for a three-day conference featuring 500 speakers, plenary addresses, workshops, exhibits, and concerts.

“It’s been really fascinating to see how interdisciplinary the field is,” García-Oteyza said of her first medieval studies-focused conference. “It’s been really generative, I’ve been able to meet a lot of people, and recognize faces that I’ve seen on book jackets.”

The event was a homecoming, of sorts, for the Medieval Academy of America, established in Cambridge and Boston in the early 1920s. The conference was last held on Harvard’s campus for the 50th anniversary in 1975.

“It’s very exciting to be bringing the Medieval Academy back to our home and to be able to demonstrate how medieval studies has changed and grown over the past hundred years,” said Sean Gilsdorf, administrative director of the Committee on Medieval Studies at Harvard as well as a lecturer on medieval studies and co-chair of the conference’s program committee. “These historical moments offer a really great opportunity to think retrospectively but also to think prospectively. Where are we going as a field? What’s the scholarship that’s going to move us into the next century?”

This year’s conference reflected the field’s expanding global scope, with presentations of papers on the medieval worlds of the Mediterranean, the British Isles, Scandinavia, Africa, Central and East Asia, and Islamic regions. A daylong pedagogy workshop on teaching the Global Middle Ages, organized by Assistant Professor of English Anna Wilson, encouraged graduate students to think more globally as medievalists.

Elena Shadrina, Ph.D. candidate in the History Department, presented her research on medieval Venetian trade agreements, focusing on how verbal contracts, witnesses, and forms of written documentation were used by merchants before implementation of an official register system. Colin Brady, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures, presented his work on the revival of the Óenach Tailteann (Tailteann Games) regional assembly and sporting festival in 10th-century Ireland.

Emily Sun, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English, presented her research on Meghan Purvis’ 2013 translation of “Beowulf,” focusing on Purvis’ perspective as an American woman approaching the Old English poem from across geographical and cultural distance. After the COVID-19 lockdowns, Sun said, she has renewed appreciation for attending conferences such as this one. These events provide opportunities to bring her work beyond the computer screen and into real conversations with other academics.

“This is a big part of what scholarship actually is — meeting your bibliography and having colleagues and professors and scholars from all rungs of the ladder at panels with you, watching your papers, and giving you ideas,” Sun said. “Seeing the recurring cast of characters who also happen to be your scholarly heroes is amazing.”

It was a challenging tour of duty.

Ambassador Nicholas Burns makes his return this week to teaching at Harvard Kennedy School after being tapped in 2021 to serve as the U.S. representative to China. Though U.S.-China relations historically are complicated, Burns’ tenure in Beijing came at a particularly difficult time.

Both countries were grappling with the pandemic, and while the U.S. economy slowly recovered, China’s faltered under its Zero COVID policy. The Biden administration imposed new, tougher sanctions on China over its human rights violations and limited exports of critical technology like semiconductors.

In this edited conversation, Burns, the Roy and Barbara Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations, spoke to the Gazette about his experience and about what gives the U.S. a strategic advantage over China.

Relations between China and the U.S. were particularly strained during your time as U.S. ambassador. What compelled you to leave Harvard take on something this difficult?

I had been in the career Foreign Service for 27 years and then came to Harvard for 13 years. So public service was the main mission of my career, and it’s something that I found great value in and enjoyed.

When President Biden called me just after the 2020 election to ask me to go, how could I say no? First of all, I deeply believe in public service. Second, the U.S.-China relationship is one of the most important, if not the most important, relationship we have, and highly problematic, challenging, competitive, disputatious.

I felt it was a unique opportunity to get back into government, to go back into what Teddy Roosevelt called “the arena of public service.” I had been urging all of my students for many years to go into that arena, and I felt if I’m being asked, I’ve got to go, too. I’m very grateful for the opportunity. It was, in many ways, the most difficult job I’ve ever had, and in many ways, the most worthwhile, as well.

What made it worthwhile?

It’s a consequential relationship for both countries. China is our most important competitor in the world. It’s the second-largest economy; it’s the second-strongest military power next to us; it’s our strongest adversary and competitor in the world. A lot is riding on how we manage that relationship for the decades ahead.

In addition to the military and technology and trade competitions, we have competing ideas and opposite ideas about human freedom, about democracy, about human rights, and the ability of people to speak out. The lack of freedoms in China and increasingly repressive and fearful environment made the agenda between us extraordinarily difficult and contested.

How challenging was it to communicate U.S. policy and values to the Chinese people? Are they aware they have less freedom than others around the world?

They’re very much aware that they don’t have access to free information unless you have a virtual private network (VPN), which most Chinese don’t have.

They’re in a phase of Chinese history where a highly educated public does not have a complete view of its own history, and they’re not aware of dissenting views that might contradict and criticize Chinese Communist practices. That’s a major hill to climb if you’re a government like ours that is trying to both manage a difficult and competitive relationship with the government and have a relationship between our society and 1.4 billion Chinese.

So, we spent a lot of time trying to relate and connect with the Chinese people. The Chinese government puts enormous resources into its vast propaganda network to distort our history, to distort what our president or secretary of state was saying or doing, or what I was saying or doing, and we faced a high degree of censorship on Chinese social media. We were trying to get free and fair and factual information into the Chinese bloodstream, and the communist authorities were trying to keep it out.

I had a chance to visit many universities, to speak with many professors and many students. After a couple of minutes, people are frank. It was not that everybody agreed with us. Sometimes in those sessions with students or faculty, I would face a lot of criticism, but I thought that was fair. I came from a university environment here at Harvard. I’m used to the classroom. You want students to speak up, and I certainly felt that students in China had a right to speak up, and sometimes they were very grateful for the opportunity to talk to an American and were very admiring of many parts of the culture. Sometimes they were very critical. But just having the dialogue, I thought, was a step forward and having connection.

What was the most rewarding or the most difficult part of the job?

The most difficult was dealing with the Chinese authorities on issues where we have entirely opposite views, sometimes a different interpretation of the facts, sometimes a different set of facts. That made it hard to negotiate.

We brought speakers; we brought American artists, musicians, sports figures to China to show the Chinese people this side of American culture.

In 2024, my last full year there, on 98 separate occasions, the Chinese authorities interfered with those public diplomacy people-to-people efforts. They actually turned off the electricity in a hall where an American musical group was going to perform. They would actively warn Chinese students not to come to seminars or writers’ workshops.

So that set of problems — not agreeing on the same facts, having wildly different interpretation of facts, active measures taken by the Chinese government to disrupt normal programs that any two countries would want to have with each other — that was the most frustrating part of the job.

The most rewarding was to stand by the flag again, to be back in government, to represent the United States as ambassador in this extraordinarily important country to us and to work alongside the men and women of Mission China. That was the best part of the job, being part of that team, being the leader of that team, working alongside them, and being proud of what they represent for our country.

Is diplomacy any different today from when you first joined the State Department in 1980?

There’s an aspect of diplomacy that remains unchanged. Especially in a difficult relationship like the U.S. and China, you want to make sure that each capital has a very sophisticated and detailed understanding of the other’s position on issues and of their motivations, good or bad. That hasn’t changed.

What has changed is communications technology, and the news cycle now is 24 hours a day. It comes from a million different sources. There’s much more transparency. There’s a greater obligation, certainly in the United States and democratic countries, to be open with their publics and to describe exactly what we’re doing and not to hide as many things as were hidden in the past. That’s something that we should be very good at.

That’s why I think it’s been a major mistake to try to deconstruct the federal workforce over the last couple of months, to abolish USAID, a great organization doing necessary and very important things for the American people around the world, and to take away Radio Free Europe/Liberty Radio, Radio Free Asia. Millions of people listen to those in authoritarian countries. It’s information that tells the truth about our society and about events that are happening in the world. I’m really concerned that we’re giving China an enormous propaganda advantage here, because we’re creating a vacuum.

“NATO is one of the most important institutions in American history. The fact that we’ve been able to lead it allowed us to keep the peace in the Cold War for five and a half decades.”

You once served as U.S. ambassador to NATO. At HKS, you were faculty chair of the Project on the Transatlantic Relationship. Where is that relationship today?

One of the key lessons I learned in a long diplomatic career is: Be nice to your allies and be faithful to them because they’re multipliers of American power and influence in the world. I certainly saw that at NATO on Sept. 11, 2001, when I was a very new ambassador.

The Canadian ambassador, David Wright, came to me hours after the attack, and said, “We should invoke Article Five of the NATO Treaty.” And within 24 hours, the Europeans and Canadians came to our defense.

They are the best allies we could hope to have. They share our values, and they share our interests. My job in China was made easier by the fact that the NATO countries were acting with us to try to constrain and limit what the Chinese could do in their very aggressive expansion of their own power.

NATO is one of the most important institutions in American history. The fact that we’ve been able to lead it allowed us to keep the peace in the Cold War for five and a half decades. Putin is trying to divide Europe. There’s no question that Russia, if it gets away with its crimes in Ukraine, if it’s a lenient peace agreement that favors Russian interests, then that will simply encourage Putin to be aggressive against Ukraine again, against Moldova, against the Baltic countries (now members of NATO), Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania.

So, there are enormous stakes for the United States in being tough-minded with Russia. Everyone wants the war to end, and I agree that it should end. Let’s try to end the war but negotiate it in a way that makes it far more likely that Putin will be constrained and limited in the future and not emboldened.

How does our relationship with European and East Asian allies affect U.S.-China relations?

China has no real allies in the world. We have over 30 treaty allies in Europe and five treaty allies in the Indo Pacific. This is what gives the United States strategic advantage over China that will play out over the next 10 to 20 to 30 years. It will be one of the most important stories in American history if we are able to retain our strength and protect our democracy and protect democracy around the world, because we deter Chinese aggression.

It would be a mistake of historic proportions to forsake our Indo-Pacific allies and NATO and give up the leadership role that we’ve had. I don’t think the American people will support doing that, and certainly, I don’t think most of our elected politicians in Congress would support it.

“Our mission, particularly at the Kennedy School, is to encourage bright young women and men to go into public service. That mission is more important than ever right now given everything that’s happening in Washington.“

How does it feel to be back at Harvard?

I’m really grateful to return to Harvard. I loved teaching at the Kennedy School. We have a first-rate faculty; we have outstanding students from over 90 countries all around the world. I learned so much from them when I was a professor here, and I’m really pleased to come back.

I’m going to reconstitute the Future of Diplomacy Project to make sure that we’re bringing diplomacy into our studies about global affairs. I’m going to teach a joint course next year with Professor Jim Sebenius of Harvard Business School on negotiations and diplomacy.

It’s one of the greatest institutions I’ve been involved with, and it’s doing great good in the world. Our mission, particularly at the Kennedy School, is to encourage bright young women and men to go into public service. That mission is more important than ever right now given everything that’s happening in Washington.

It’s certainly understandable if students here and elsewhere would feel that a public service career is no longer available to them. Our job is to encourage students, to understand that at the municipal level, at the state level, at the national level, and at the global level, we need good people to go into public service. That is not going to change. The pendulum in the United States, at some point, will swing back to honor public service as we have always done in our history.

There are lots of entrepreneurs these days. Founders of businesses, of course, are entrepreneurs, and so are the managers below them. Ride-share drivers, influencers, life coaches: entrepreneurs. There are self-styled intrapreneurs, solopreneurs, and sidepreneurs, all of whom embody the ideals of entrepreneurialism in their own unique ways.

In “Make Your Own Job,” history of science lecturer Erik Baker explores the American embrace of entrepreneurialism and why, for all the popularity of the approach, it can feel so exhausting.

Baker got interested in the topic as his friends graduated from college, landed well-paying corporate jobs, and quickly became miserable. One told him that she felt like Natalie Portman’s character in the sci-fi movie “Annihilation,” who descends into a black pit and discovers a sinister doppelganger. There was something interesting, Baker thought, about how work changes our relationships with ourselves.

In “Make Your Own Job,” Baker traces America’s enthusiasm for entrepreneurialism to the end of the 19th century. It was the conclusion of the first era of American industrialization, and the rapid electrification of manufacturing plants, among other developments, depressed demand for factory labor. After high levels of job growth throughout the 1800s, Baker writes, “The rate of employment growth in manufacturing began to taper off in 1890 and became negative around 1920.”

Social scientists called this job loss “structural” or “technological” unemployment: “Unemployment that was not the product of transient, cyclical crises,” Baker writes, “but was rather a side effect of irreversible changes to the technical structure of American industry.”

In response, Americans shifted from an industrious work ethic to an entrepreneurial one infused with ideas of personal transcendence in New Thought. Instead of focusing on the inherent value of hard work, the new ethic emphasized that hard work wasn’t enough; one should apply one’s own unique skills to the task at hand with ceaseless ambition. A cohort of success writers, across racial and gender demographics, began preaching a similar ideology: “Make your own job.”

Baker chronicles how entrepreneurialism, and its very definition, expanded over time. In the early 1900s, orthodox management styles that focused primarily on production processes gave way to “entrepreneurial management,” which focused not on merely managing employees, but inspiring them. At Harvard Business School, among other institutions, management intellectuals preached the importance of leaders who made workers “not truly feel like subordinates,” in Baker’s words, “but like members of a team or a family, or even a revolutionary cadre.”

In Baker’s narrative, entrepreneurial fervor tends to increase during times of economic stress. During the Great Depression, “odd jobs” became something more. Doing freelance work was not just a way to make a few dollars, but, as the authors of the 1933 book “Make Your Own Job: Opportunities in Unusual Vocations” put it, a way for someone to build “a small one-man business of his own.” Women over 40, who often faced hiring discrimination, could embrace this individualistic ethic. “We Are Forty and We Did Get Jobs,” boasted the title of one self-help book aimed at women.

Baker uses these references to self-help literature to illustrate shifts in national sentiment. Authors such as Napoleon Hill, whose 1937 book “Think and Grow Rich” remains popular to this day, encouraged readers to turn work into a calling that relied on specialized knowledge, creativity, and self-promotion. “With the changed conditions ushered in by the world economic collapse,” Hill wrote, “came also the need for newer and better ways of marketing personal services.”

By the mid-20th century, Baker writes, interest in entrepreneurialism had surged into non-economic fields, with Abraham Maslow and other psychologists becoming cheerleaders. “The most valuable 100 people to bring into a deteriorating society,” Maslow wrote, “would be not 100 chemists, or politicians, or professors, or engineers, but rather 100 entrepreneurs.”

It also became a catch-all explanation for a lack of economic development. As the fate of American cities sharply diverged with the relocation and shuttering of factories during the 1960s, certain experts blamed increasing unemployment in places like Detroit on a lack of entrepreneurial spirit.

With these mid-century changes, Baker argues, almost everyone could think of themselves as entrepreneurs: leaders of companies, managers who could inspire their co-workers, employees who could take more initiative, and even unemployed people looking for work. “It was far from obvious that high-tech corporate executives … were doing exactly the same sort of thing as a laid-off Black worker taking adult education classes, or a shopkeeper in India contemplating a change in management methods,” Baker writes. “But midcentury thinking about entrepreneurship and development depended upon precisely this equivalence.”

In the 1970s and 1980s, it wasn’t so much a scarcity of work that drew people toward entrepreneurialism, Baker argues, but a scarcity of jobs people found meaningful. This yearning was filled in part by leaders who encouraged employees to see their work as a source of enlightenment. Apple’s Steve Jobs would state that competing with IBM was not an economic imperative but a moral one — lest IBM win and stifle innovation. Ralph Nader’s Center for Study of Responsive Law was supported by young, ambitious employees. When asked how many hours he expected them to work, Nader deadpanned: “The ideal is 100.”

The popularity of entrepreneurialism continues to this day, Baker says, in part because it glorifies a perpetual state of risk. With fears of technological job displacement rising along with the number of people in freelance or temporary roles, more people can consider themselves the center of an entrepreneurial operation — even if the operation is just themselves.

Reading “Make Your Own Job,” one can see why Baker’s friend found herself experiencing science-fiction levels of misery. When failure always feels tangible, it’s hard to relax. For Baker, entrepreneurialism requires that everyone keep a solitary eye on the future — and remain anxious in the present.

Offering a better understanding of the universe. Revealing a possible layer of gene regulation in human cells. Treating muscular diseases with implantable neurotechnologies. These are examples of the research supported by the Aramont Fellowship Fund for Emerging Science Research, which acknowledges the visionary work of exceptional early career scientists.

Established in 2017 through a gift from the Aramont Charitable Foundation, the award recognizes groundbreaking scientific innovation and exploration by providing crucial funding for high-risk, high-reward research that otherwise might not be conducted. This year’s cohort includes five scholars spearheading projects with the potential to significantly impact their respective fields and advance novel discoveries with wide-ranging implications.

“The Aramont Fund’s transformative impact on the awardees’ work and careers is inspiring,” said Vice Provost for Research John Shaw. “Investing in our early career scholars is vital to driving scientific innovation and nurturing the next generation of researchers. We all look forward to following the newest cohort’s achievements.”

Guanhao Huang

“Exploring Gravitational Physics Using Nano-mechanics on a Chip”

The nature of gravity at the quantum level and the mysterious properties of dark matter are two of the biggest open questions in modern physics. While past breakthroughs have come from large-scale international collaborations using massive scientific instruments, an exciting new approach is emerging: using nanomechanical devices in university labs to probe these mysteries. Unlike traditional methods that rely on laser-controlled individual atoms, these tiny but relatively heavy devices — often made of materials like diamonds — act as ultra-sensitive quantum force sensors and sources of gravity. This makes them uniquely suited to explore new gravitational effects at microscopic scales. Most current research focuses on only a few vibrational states and leaves many unexplored, which limits the potential for studying gravity. To overcome this challenge, Huang aims to develop ultra-precise sensors by engineering and controlling these devices at the quantum level across a broad range of vibrational states. This could open new doors for detecting dark matter and gravitational phenomena, offering fresh insights into both the microscopic and cosmic scales — all using compact, tabletop experiments within a university setting. His work has the potential to reshape the understanding of the universe in ways previously thought possible only with massive, billion-dollar facilities.

Giacomo Maddaloni

“Discovering Brain Circuits That Change Seasonally and Offer Clues to the Seasonal Exacerbation of Diseases from Neuropsychiatric to Cardiovascular”

The ability to anticipate the light-dark cycle of the days and seasons — and to organize appropriate responses — are vital adaptive strategies that have been observed across the animal kingdom and in humans. When thrown off, the sleep-wake cycle and other biological rhythms can cause or exacerbate disease. However, little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying such adaptations. Giacomo Maddaloni has undertaken studies that led to the discovery of a previously unappreciated mouse brain circuit and form of plasticity that proves critical for synchronizing activity and sleep-wake rhythms. As part of that work, he discovered that specialized neurons function as initial broadcasters of day length information in a region of the brain that controls many behaviors and physiological processes. Now Maddaloni is expanding on this work by characterizing the neurons’ molecular identity and deciphering how they decode and relay information to orchestrate whole-organism responses. He aims to identify a master brain hub vital for accurate circadian and seasonal adaptations, and molecular and circuit pathways, with far-reaching translational therapeutic potential.

Silvi Rouskin

“Unveiling Human Riboswitches Through High Throughput Detection and Analysis”

Riboswitches are dynamic RNA structures that control various metabolic pathways in simple organisms. They have not been detected in humans, which is likely due to the technical limitations of research. The discovery of human riboswitches could enable new therapeutic targets for metabolic diseases and change our understanding of how gene expression is regulated. Silvi Rouskin has already identified promising riboswitch candidates, and her unique integration of experimental and computational approaches puts her team in a strong position to make this pivotal discovery — potentially revealing a previously unrecognized layer of gene regulation in human cells. This finding would fill a critical gap in the knowledge of cellular biology and open new avenues for medical research and drug development.

Shriya Srinivasan

 “Accessible Neurotechnology and Human-Machine Interfacing”

Implantable neurotechnologies hold promise for treating muscular diseases and are expected to be available as a consumer technology within the next 10 to 15 years, but the significant invasiveness required to implant the devices will limit accessibility and exacerbate gaps in care and capabilities. Shriya Srinivasan aims to make neurotechnology scalable and accessible by developing neurostimulation devices that can be precisely implanted through a single skin injection. Preliminary prototypes in rats have demonstrated that Srinivasan’s lab can read high-resolution neural signals and stimulate discrete muscles for fine motor control. The system can stimulate the muscles to provide sensory feedback about the movement of a prosthesis or robotic, augment forces in weak muscles, and potentially relay complex physical data through the body’s neural processing centers. The implications of Srinivasan’s project are significant for treating neuromuscular diseases, studying human sensorimotor performance, and advancing consumer technology.

Melanie Weber

“Geometry-informed Foundation Models for Scientific Machine Learning”

Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing scientific research, with foundation models driving breakthroughs that may hold the key to challenges such as climate change or currently incurable diseases. But there are limitations: Foundation models require extensive training data and substantial amounts of computing resources, posing challenges when the data is expensive or limited. For example, a foundation model for weather prediction may need training on millions of data points to provide accurate results. Encoding data geometry, such as symmetries arising from fundamental laws of physics, could significantly reduce the data and resources needed by providing the model with information it can use to avoid wasting resources on pursuing scenarios that we know cannot exist. Melanie Weber seeks to develop geometry-informed models that balance the strengths of current geometric models and general-purpose foundation models to produce models that are both resource-efficient and applicable to a wide range of scientific problems.

Social media exerts a powerful influence on college campuses. Has the technology helped broker new connections across ideological difference? Or has it simply siphoned students into conversations with those who share their views?

This was the topic of last Thursday’s inaugural Ethics IRL (or, in real life,) a new series organized by the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics. Its format, inspired by the 1980s PBS show “Ethics in America,” uses the Socratic method to engage Harvard community members on pressing issues.

Things got underway with moderator Nien-hê Hsieh, the Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, posing a hypothetical: Assigned reading for a general-education course covers immigration, with students required to post their responses to a class discussion board.

One student writes: “I don’t understand why people who want to defend their country are being called racist, are being called xenophobic nationalists. Since when did it become a crime to defend the borders of your country?”

“I don’t see how you can live in a country where federal agents are ripping children from the arms of their parents and families,” responds another. “This is basically state-sanctioned trauma.”

On the panel were a dean, an activist, a journalist, an influencer, and a current undergraduate who largely avoids the technology. Hsieh instructed the group to put themselves in the place of students.

“Would you give your honest opinion no matter what people might say in response to those posts? Would you carefully craft a neutral position and try not to attract your classmates’ attention?” he asked.

“I think this prompt is missing a very important piece of context, and that is whether or not the responses posted are anonymous,” answered Soleil Golden ’24, a premedical neuroscience student at Boston Children’s Hospital with more than 70,000 Instagram followers, who described using social media to hone her rhetorical skills. “If it’s anonymous, I think people would feel a lot freer in voicing their opinions.”

And what if the instructor pulled those comments into the lecture, pressing both students to elaborate on their positions?

“I think I’d be more inclined to speak out,” answered Brody Douglass ’27, an economics concentrator and Navy ROTC midshipman who said he limits social media in favor of in-person socializing. “I believe that, in general, better dialogue happens when it’s actually dialogue rather than just a series of discussion posts where words can be taken more easily out of context.”

Panelists offered a mix of deeply personal and evidence-based insights on the state of modern discourse. The series was introduced with support from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Civil Discourse initiative.

“Can we imagine how this would have played out on social media?” Hsieh wondered.

“Perhaps there would have been some grains of interesting conversation,” replied researcher and activist Yaёl Eisenstat, a policy director at the Cybersecurity for Democracy project at New York University, who noted the platforms’ influence on the very formulation of the assignment. “But chances are, in the way social media is constructed today, it would have been drowned out by the more emotional.”

And what if both students were doxed? What if the resulting fear drove one to withdraw from the university entirely?

“I think would be extremely sad if the first student left,” said Sewell Chan ’98, executive editor of the Columbia Journalism Review. Speaking directly to the charge that universities have become inhospitable to conservatives, he continued: “We live in a world in which 40 percent or more of the country not only agrees with student number one but would say things much harsher. If we’re acting like we’re so offended or bothered by student number one that we can’t handle what they said, that should say something about us.”

As the conversation progressed, panelists kept returning to the tension between the goals of higher education and the algorithmically driven platforms.

“Universities have a particular mission,” explained Rakesh Khurana, Danoff Dean of Harvard College. “Their mission is to search for Veritas, as close as they can get. They do that by bringing diverse perspectives and points of view to an environment. They create certain conditions that are different than free speech conditions, which is that you can say what you want to say but you have to defend it with reason and evidence.

“I can stand outside and say, ‘The Earth is flat;’ it’s perfectly within my free speech rights,” he continued. “I can say it in the classroom, but don’t expect it to get marked correct in my Earth and Planetary Sciences class.”

But Eisenstat said that social media algorithms actively undermine the pursuit Khurana described.

“The world that social media has helped create affects how students interact with each other on campus,” she argued. “What the world of social media has done is made it easier and easier to both choose your silos but also be pushed into silos that you’re not aware you’re being pushed into. … It’s the personalization. It’s the using all your human behavioral data to then turn around and target you with the information that is going to most appeal to your lizard brain.”

The event ended with panelists sharing suggestions for community members who want to help foster a climate more conducive to open exchange.

“Push yourself to engage with people who are not like-minded,” Eisenstat said. “But do not therefore think it is too hard to create the social media environment we want and to push for the legislation that would help.”

“I’ve spent hours talking to people online,” Golden said. “While those conversations can be frustrating and you can feel like you’re losing the argument, I have not engaged in any social interaction online where I haven’t walked away with a new piece of knowledge.”

“I now try to discipline myself,” Khurana said. “When I find myself disagreeing with somebody, I assume we’re plugged into different algorithms.”

Joyce Chaplin thought she was done with Benjamin Franklin.

“But then I was reading about the Little Ice Age and the particularly bad winter of 1740 to 1741,” said Chaplin, the James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History. “Major harbors were reported as freezing over — in Boston, in London, in Venice. The consequence was famine in several places including Ireland, where as much as 20 percent of the population may have died — that’s a bigger toll than the more famous Great Hunger of the 19th century.

“And all along I kept thinking, ‘I know the dates 1740 and 1741 from somewhere.’”

Chaplin, an expert on early American science, technology, and medicine, eventually put things together. These were the years when Franklin — a humble printer who went on to become a world-renowned scientist, inventor, and statesman — devised the prototype for his Pennsylvania fireplace, a flatpack of iron plates colonists could assemble and insert into their hearths to improve heating.

“It was developed during this very, very cold winter as a climate adaptation,” explained Chaplin, who has written at length on Franklin’s scientific contributions. “The design was supposed to burn less wood yet make a room even warmer than an ordinary fireplace.”

Franklin went on to develop at least five separate iterations of the influential technology over half a century, moving from wood to coal for fuel. Chaplin’s newly released “The Franklin Stove: An Unintended American Revolution” finds this seemingly modest invention catalyzing new thinking on weather, technology, and comfort.

We sat down with Chaplin, who is also affiliated faculty in the History of Science Department, to ask about the book and its many lessons for the 21st century. The interview was edited for length and clarity.

You published an intellectual biography of Benjamin Franklin in 2006 and edited an edition of his autobiography for Norton a few years later. What draws you to this 18th-century figure time and again?

The popular conception is “Poor Richard,” Franklin’s alter ego from the almanacs he published. But he’s far more complicated than that. He was the youngest son of a Boston chandler, somebody who worked with his hands making soap and candles out of animal fat. It was a completely respectable but not very distinguished background.

The classic ways of getting ahead that were available to a man like Franklin included war or some kind of military career that would advance him beyond the rank he was born to. Politics, if he could get a foot in. Writing, perhaps. Science had also become a part of popular culture, with Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle becoming household names in the wake of their big discoveries.

I think Franklin looked over all these options. He eventually looked at Newton and thought: “Why not try that route?”

Is it fair to call the Franklin stove one of his lesser-known inventions?

For the moment, I think that’s fair. A lot of people know about Franklin inventing the lightning rod. Those who need progressive glasses at some point probably know he invented bifocals. Others have heard about his more charming inventions — his swimming fins, his folding chair/step stool for reaching books in the library. But given the climate framing of this particular invention, perhaps the public will start to embrace the stove as central to his life in science.

Let’s dig into the environmental issues Franklin faced during the winter of 1740 and ’41. It was more than frigid weather.

Franklin was aware that as more settlers were arriving, being born, and spreading across the landscape, they were going to deforest the territory and make firewood more expensive and possibly even inaccessible to the poor. We have his accounts of people stealing firewood or ripping off pieces of fences.

But the most ambitious part of his plan was to make people more comfortable than ever before. And the fact that it was colder than ever before makes that a really interesting manifestation of enlightenment confidence — that humans could use science and technology to make life better, whatever the circumstances.

How did the stove help further understanding of the natural world?

Atmosphere was a relatively new word in terms of describing the envelope around the Earth, and this is what Franklin thought a good heating system could create indoors. He explained in a self-published pamphlet how his fireplace worked through the principle of convection: that air, when it’s warmed, will expand and rise. And what you want is some kind of heat source that does this layer by layer until the entire room is warmed.

But Franklin also used this concept to explain atmospheric phenomena outdoors. He used it to explain how storm systems move up the Atlantic coast. He eventually used it to explain the Gulf Stream — how heated air moves up from the Gulf of Mexico and out over the Atlantic Ocean with a relationship to the warmer current of water underneath. When making these grand statements, Franklin would often write something like: “Just like there’s a draft of air from your fireplace to the door.” It was a brilliant strategy for making science accessible to a reading public.

Franklin is known for his late-in-life abolitionism, but your book adds one more entry to the list of ways he profited from slavery before that. What new information did you uncover?

I knew from reading my colleague John Bezís-Selfa’s “Forging America” (2004) that there had been an iron industry in the colonies, including Pennsylvania. I also had a sense from reading Bezís-Selfa that enslaved Black people performed some of the labor on these estates.

I went to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, which holds most of the surviving records of the Pennsylvania iron industry, and indeed found these two enslaved men — Cesar and Streaphon — who worked in the iron establishment that made most of the Pennsylvania fireplaces.

One of these men — Streaphon — managed to buy his own freedom. That, to me, was an important indication that the desire to be free was a constant. It can be seen everywhere in early American history.

What compelled Franklin to try minimizing emissions from his stove?

He was appalled at the filthy air in places like London. So, he tried to design the last three versions of his stove to re-burn smoke — by sending the smoke that would otherwise be ascending into the chimney back into the fire.

Franklin pointed out, correctly, that smoke is really particles of unburned fuel. If you could burn it again, at least it’s more efficient. You’re wasting less fuel. You’re putting less junk into the air. He’s so concerned with doing this that a friend teases him for being “a universal smoke doctor.”

To me, it’s a very interesting statement about questioning the level of emissions that already seemed to be compromising human health. Of course, what gets identified decades after his death in 1790 is that some of these emissions are invisible. The American scientific observer and experimenter Eunice Foote documented the climate-altering effects of CO₂ in 1856.

You connect today’s techno-optimism to Franklin and other inventors of his era, who thought they could invent their way out of a climate crisis. What lessons does your book hold for inheritors of this philosophy?

I don’t think Franklin meant to validate burning coal in the industrial sense, but he did validate it as an energy source. That says to me: Don’t pick the quick and obvious solution. Or at least be suspicious and monitor how it’s doing.

We should be wary of this silver bullet fantasy, that we need to find just one thing to sequester carbon out of the atmosphere. Or that we can just shift to sustainable energy in the absence of climate mitigation before chemical changes in the atmosphere become too dire.

We’ll need more than one inventor, one device, one hero. There are just too many variables for one solution to be possible. We need to modify our course as soon as possible with a lot of solutions working together.

Have you ever thought of the chemicals that went into making your iPhone? Your favorite pleather chair? The shirt on your back? It takes thousands of chemicals to produce things we use every day, and some of them could be harmful to both your health and the planet’s.

ChemFORWARD, the 2024 winner of Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs Roy Family Award for Environmental Partnership, is trying to make our products safer by creating a database of industrial chemicals and their effects on human and environmental health.

Heather McKenney, the science and safer chemistry lead at ChemFORWARD, was joined by Kennedy School experts as well as David Bourne, lead sustainability strategist at Google, in a panel last week at the Kennedy School’s Malkin Penthouse to discuss the company’s work as well as challenges the private sector faces in trying to reduce chemical hazards.

“We live in a world with thousands of chemicals,” said Henry Lee, Jassim M. Jaidah Family Director of the Kennedy School’s Environment and Natural Resources Program and senior lecturer in Public Policy. “They are present in the clothes we wear, what we eat and drink, the furniture in our homes, and even in the health products that we buy. Thus, focusing on what society can do to ensure the protection of public health in this chemical-intense world is especially important.”

ChemFORWARD, a Washington D.C.-based 501c3, compiles and maintains a digital repository of “verified chemical hazard assessments,” or CHAs, available to corporate subscribers in order to make informed and environmentally sound decisions about the chemicals used in their supply chains.

“There’s no requirement across all industries that all chemicals must be vetted before use,” said McKenney, who was a lead for the toxicology and product safety team at Honest Company, a baby and beauty products maker, for six years.

McKenney said there are well-intentioned companies that want to certify their products as safe, but struggle keeping track of every chemical used in their supply chain, and what the impacts of those chemicals are.

“There’s tons of toxicology data out there, and how do we start to apply and share that information such that it’s not just siloed in a REACH dossier in the EU or in an individual organization who’s developed that data?” she said, referring to the EU’s Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals regulation. “We’ve developed a methodology that houses the chemical hazard assessments across 24-plus human and environmental health endpoints.”

On the human side, ChemFORWARD assesses a chemical’s carcinogenicity, mutagenicity, reproductive toxicity, skin irritation, eye irritation, and neurotoxicity, among other things. On the environmental side, they measure things like persistence, or the ability of chemicals to break down.

“Looking at the totality of the data, we then take the totality of the hazards and send an overall hazard classification, or what we call our hazard bands,” McKenney said.

ChemFORWARD hazard bands fall into alphabetical rankings (A, B, C, etc.,) but are also categorized based on how much data is available about a given substance. There are chemicals marked with a question mark when the data is deemed insufficient.

Bourne said companies like his are partnering with ChemFORWARD as an important step toward creating healthier products at his firm and across the private sector.

“What we realize in partnership with ChemFORWARD is that every time we do a chemical hazard assessment, it’s not just proprietary information for Google or for whoever did the assessment. It’s now available to anyone who wants to try to platform. And so the scalability that creates is really what we saw as transformational,” he said. “The analogy I like to give is if you wanted to watch a great TV show, and you had to pay a Hollywood studio to make a show just for you, it would cost you an absurd amount of money. Because they have lots of subscribers to a streaming platform, everyone can contribute and get access to a whole body of content that is valuable.”

Charles Taylor, an assistant professor of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, said this type of information-gathering could have important benefits beyond the private sector.

“This kind of information is really important to get out to researchers and others who can … assess if we see chronic effects or downstream effects,” he said.

The Roy Family Award is presented biannually to celebrate an outstanding cross-sector partnership that enhances environmental quality through novel and creative approaches.

When Jinah Kim learned in 2016 that Museum of Fine Arts conservation scientist Michele Derrick had detected cobalt in a 15th-century Indian manuscript, she was presented with an obvious explanation: the document had probably been retouched later, potentially with synthetic pigments. After all, European-made cobalt-based pigments like smalt were widely imported to South Asia only in the 17th century, and synthetic cobalt blue was popularized only in the early 19th century.

But Kim, who was gathering data on pigments as research for her second book, wasn’t convinced. 

“What do we know about actual pigment usage in this region at this time period?” Kim, George P. Bickford Professor of Indian and South Asian Art in the Department of History of Art & Architecture, asked herself. “Does it all have to come from Europe? It’s possible there are indigenous knowledge of colorants that we don’t know about.” 

Further analysis by Katherine Eremin, Patricia Cornwell Senior Conservation Scientist at Harvard Art Museums, confirmed that the smalt found in the Jain manuscript had a different composition from European-manufactured smalt, indicating it came from a different source. 

It was a “eureka” moment for Kim, who hypothesized that some pigments believed to have gotten to South Asia as imports from Europe may in fact have been used in South Asia long before. The result was the “Mapping Color in History Project,” an ongoing effort since 2018 to create an object-based pigment database for historical research on art from this region. 

“I realized a lot of pigment databases available out there are based on a Western European canon, because that’s where the research has been,” Kim said. “If you look at Asian materials, especially South Asia, Himalaya, and Southeast Asia, everything is so colorful but the baseline understanding of what colorants were available is not known.”

The open-access database allows users to search by painting title, keyword, pigment, color, or element, and filter results by artist, date, and more. There’s also a map to search by location of origin. On each artwork’s page, users can view an analysis of what pigments were found in the painting, what method was used to identify them, and the scientists’ confidence level. Kim wants the database to be useful for “anyone interested in color,” including people in the cultural heritage field, art historians, curators, teachers, and students.

Kim describes Mapping History as highly collaborative, bringing together experts in digital humanities, conservation science, and art history.

“I do describe it as a three-legged stool,” Kim said. “It cannot be done by one person because it requires a lot of different expertise. You need to do computer programming to make this database, you need to work with material analysis, and you need art historical research to map it in history and time.”

Kim worked with Rashmi Singhal and the Arts & Humanities Research Computing (DARTH) team and Jeff Steward from Harvard Art Museums on the technology aspects of the project. The database was built from scratch.

Tracy Stuber, digital humanities specialist with DARTH who acts as bridge between the research teams and software engineers, said the Mapping Color website is unique because it links two types of data that are usually siloed and used by separate audiences: data about the artwork itself and data about the scientific analysis.

“Because we know approximately where or when an artwork was made, we’re then able to say, ‘This pigment that we’ve identified in this artwork was therefore made approximately in that place at that time,’” Stuber said. “Linking them together in a database not only makes that data accessible to the other audience but facilitates more collaboration and conversation between those two disciplines.”

Working with ancient art means that scientists can’t usually take samples for analysis. Mapping Color’s scientists rely 99% of the time on non-destructive methods, according to Eremin, who is one of the project’s core partners.

When Eremin analyzes an artwork, she typically starts with imaging which can identify certain pigments that behave differently in infrared and ultraviolet lights. Indian Yellow, for example, glows under UV light. She also examines the pigment under a microscope to see the blend of colors used.

“You look at them to begin with and you think, ‘Oh that’s beautiful,’ but then you actually look down the microscope and see the really fine details,” she said. “You think, ‘that’s just blue,’ and then you look at it and see that actually it’s lots of different things mixed together.”

She will then try to identify elements using x-ray fluorescence to see what characteristic x-rays are emitted from the painting. For example, a green can be identified as copper green if there are visible copper rays, or yellow orpiment (an arsenic sulfide mineral) blended with blue if there are visible arsenic rays. To gather information at the molecular level, Eremin uses Raman spectroscopy, a non-invasive laser technology which can reveal if a copper green is either malachite or atacamite.

On rare occasions if an artwork is already flaking, it may begin a conversation between conservators, curators, and scientists about whether to take a sample. Eremin used an infrared light technique known as Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy on one tiny particle taken from a crumbling 16th-century Indian manuscript, and identified that kaolin clay was used for the white border detail.

The findings give insight into the vision of the artists. In an analysis of a 1588 “Divan of Anvari” manuscript series, Mapping Color scientists realized the artist used an Indian yellow pigment for the pure yellow of figure’s clothing, but used orpiment, an older arsenic sulfide yellow, for highlighting leaves on a tree.

“What that tells me is that artists are trying to get to that pure form of brilliant yellow, and they’re discerning between different shades,” Kim said.

The Mapping Color in History Project has also collaborated with Jaipur-based traditional Indian painter Babulal Marotia to analyze samples of pigments he uses in his studio. It’s helpful to study materials used by contemporary artists like Marotia, who are carrying on artistic traditions that have been passed down for generations, according to Kim.

“You can’t dissolve a 700-year-old painting to see what has happened.” Kim said. “This gives us an access point to that historical moment through this type of material that’s still being used.”

Mapping the origin locations of the paintings in the database isn’t easy, as historic paintings from South Asia often lack precise information about the date, location, and artist.

“If you look up certain Indian painting in a museum’s database, it will say, ‘North India, 17th-18th century,” Kim said. “You cannot map “North India, 17th -18th century” in any point in time and place. That’s where we need to do more research on objects, find more relevant information and answer comparative studies to narrow it down and come up with better attribution.”

Kim has a list of ideas for how to improve the database (adding more artworks, visualization tools, and certainty indicators) that she is excited to implement.

“I want to understand certain trends, I want to be able to see patterns, I want to see things that were not visible before,” Kim said. “But a database is only as good as the data itself, so there’s a lot of work that still needs to go in.”

Some of the work on the database was supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Cluny III, once the largest building in Europe, was little more than rubble when Harvard architectural historian Kenneth Conant laid eyes on it in the 1920s. His efforts to painstakingly recreate the medieval abbey as it looked in the Middle Ages — outlined as part of an exhibition now on view at the Graduate School of Design — illustrate how architects learn to see what isn’t there. 

“Envisioning Cluny: Kenneth Conant and Representations of Medieval Architecture, 1872–2025,” on view in the Druker Design Gallery through April 4, explores the ways that the study of medieval architecture has changed, from hand-drawn sketches to photography to 3D digital models and virtual reality.  

“The exhibit is the story of a man and his passion, which is the Cluny abbey church, and how we can experience it today using modern tools,” said Matt Cook, digital scholarship program manager at Harvard Library, who worked closely with curator and architectural historian Christine Smith. “Several teams across Harvard Library allowed Christine to realize her vision for the exhibit with emerging technology.”

Construction began on the Benedictine abbey of Cluny III, located in the Burgundy region of France, in 1088. It stood for more than 700 years, growing to more than 500 feet long and 100 feet high; at one time, it was home to about 1,000 monks. But after the French Revolution, the impressive structure was demolished and sold for scrap materials.

When Conant first arrived at Cluny decades after its destruction, all that remained was the south transept and eight partially destroyed capitals, or the decorative tops of columns, which once stood behind the altar. 

Conant received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard and taught architectural history at the University from 1920 to 1954. It was an era when architectural historians were still learning to classify medieval architecture and to understand what a building might have looked like in its original form before pieces were added or taken away over the centuries. 

“It’s a kind of an idealism,” said Smith, who is the Robert C. and Marian K. Weinberg Professor of Architectural History. 

The “idealist” task that Conant gave himself was to imagine Cluny III as it once was, in excruciating detail, based on what he knew of similar buildings and on 20 years of excavations. 

“In my own work, when I’m studying something, I try to know it in such reality and detail that I live it,” Smith said. “I think that’s what he’s doing: He’s living it. He wants to see it. He wants to feel it in many different ways. He wants to understand it objectively, but also in terms of the color, the light, how you moved around in it, how it felt to be there.” 

The enduring mystery of the Cluny capitals 

The eight capitals discovered at Cluny III fascinated Conant. They were damaged, with key details missing, but each seemed to feature ornate designs of people, plants, and musical instruments. It wasn’t clear which sides ought to face the front, or what order they should go in, or if they even told a cohesive story. 

“Some people think they’re all by one sculptor; other people think they’re by two identifiable sculptors; other people think we don’t know,” Smith said. “There’s a lot of uncertainty about them, which is what’s fun.”

Early in his career, Conant hoped the columns told a single story about the virtues of monastic life, Smith said. But eventually, he came to believe there was little uniting them as an octet. To this day, there are no firm answers, but they remain an object of study as one of the earliest examples of figural sculpture in the Romanesque era. 

From plaster casts to 3D 

Contemporary students of architectural history don’t have to rely on the stone capitals themselves, or even the unwieldy plaster casts that scholars have traditionally used as aids. 

Using a method called photogrammetry, Harvard Library Imaging Services photographed the plaster casts of the Cluny columns to create the 3D models that are featured in the exhibit. The team took hundreds of individual photos of each capital cast to create each model. Additionally, library conservators, archivists, and curators prepared the print and photo reproductions on display. 

With the 3D scans, Smith and her students can zoom in, rotate, and rearrange the eight capitals and each of their designs in a way previous generations never could, giving them new insight into the enduring puzzle of the octet. 

“I can compare them in a way that I can’t with the plaster cast,” Smith said. “I can look at all eight of them in a row.” 

It’s a different experience for today’s architectural students than for Conant and his contemporaries, she said. But at the core, the exercise is the same: Learning to see what’s there, and learning to imagine what’s not.

“Envisioning Cluny: Kenneth Conant and Representations of Medieval Architecture, 1872–2025” is on display through April 4 in the Druker Design Gallery.

For Rakesh Khurana, understanding the mission comes first. Without it, the what-do-we-do-next-and-how are meaningless.

That principle helped guide Khurana, who will step down at the end of the academic year after 11 years as the Danoff Dean of Harvard College and return to teaching in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and at Harvard Business School.

Khurana, the Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development and a professor of sociology, first arrived at Harvard in 1993 for graduate school, earning a master’s in sociology in 1997 and a Ph.D. in organizational behavior in 1998.

During his tenure as dean, Khurana worked to enhance opportunities in the arts and public service, reorganized office infrastructure to better align supports for students, helped launch the Intellectual Vitality initiative, and defended the goal of recruiting students to the University from a diverse set of backgrounds and experiences.

And, of course, he built a presence on Instagram affectionately known as the Deanstagram. In this edited conversation, Khurana talks about the work he’s done and the lessons he’s learned — about himself and the community.

You’re one of the longest serving deans of Harvard College. Can you talk a bit about aspects of your tenure that you found particularly gratifying?

I think I’ve had the best role in higher education. As an immigrant to this country, growing up in a family that held higher education and education as sacred and Harvard as being one of the institutions that embodied that idea, I feel lucky.

Part of what we accomplished from the start was knowing that we were going to be a mission-oriented organization and institution, going back to the founding. Our aim has been to educate citizen leaders and be clear how we do it — through the transformative experience of a liberal arts and science education and developing specificity around the intellectual, the social, and personal transformation.

One of the things that I feel good about is that there’s a strong sense of understanding of the College’s mission. That clarity has let us take numerous actions on everything ranging from adopting an honor code, which is emblematic of the kind of aspiration that we want to have for our students, to the renewal of the Gen Ed program, which occurred at a time when there was a debate over whether it would even continue.

The commitment to the idea of a general education that’s broad and anchored in the liberal arts and that centers on important questions of society is really critical. Professor Michael Sandel’s renewed class “Justice” is one example of creating a intergenerational connection between our students and alumni who took that class decades earlier that both honors the past, but that’s also relevant/critical for the issues of today.

I am also proud of our work on the Intellectual Vitality initiative, which was something the team had been focused on for several years. Having a data-informed but also flexible approach helped us recognize how Harvard could avoid the fashion of the day and rather commit to substance on these issues. I hope the approach of holding true to our mission and at the same time evolving is remembered as one of the mainstays of my deanship.

During your tenure as dean, you faced various challenges. Is there one you think you learned the most from?

Universities reflect the world, but they can also magnify what is happening beyond our campus. Bringing together people who are, for the first time, living with and learning from people with very different backgrounds and experiences is probably the greatest opportunity we have.

But creating this community requires building a lot of capacities and skills and role modeling. Maybe in the past we could take for granted that this all existed, but I think we can’t assume that students and faculty and staff are coming here with this understanding.

We have to recognize that Harvard is not a perfect institution. I think recognizing this work of bringing together people with different backgrounds and experiences has existed in this institution from Day One. This is an institution that recognizes that excellence comes in a variety of forms. In the process of that evolving understanding we get closer to our motto of veritas.

How different was the job of being dean from what you expected?

My background is as an organizational sociologist, and my particular focus is studying institutions, leadership, and bureaucracy. In that field, you learn a lot of theory, do empirical work, write case studies.

There’s a lot of knowing, and then there’s the doing, and then you discover the knowing/doing gap. While some of what you teach are concepts that are helpful and useful, they’re often ideal types that don’t take into account all the particular contingencies and challenges of the specific experiences.

There are three things that, for me, held true. A sense of mission — “What is our purpose?” The vision — “Where are we going?” And the values, or “How are we going to get there?” The power of that is something I’d been teaching about for years, and it’s so interesting to see how powerful it is and how easy it is to forget. I start every meeting with the College mission. If people who are leading are not minding the mission and the vision and the values, who is?

The second lesson that I learned is the microscope that we’re under. When you’re in a position of responsibility, you are constantly role modeling. People are not just paying attention to what you say, but to what you do. Your walk has to be your talk. In fact, your walk is probably more important than your talk.

Something you learn working with students and your team is that you’re a coach, and you’re often trying to figure out what people’s aspirational skills are, what their motivations are. While you’re coaching them to try to help connect those two, in the process you’re coaching yourself.

The other thing I learned is that we’re all works in progress. We’re all trying to become better versions of ourselves. If you’re surrounded by people who care about the mission, who understand the vision of where we’re going, and desire to operate with those values, you can create incredible trust, allowing you to do important things, including getting through some really difficult moments.

Structurally, the most difficult moment was COVID-19.

In many ways we had to live without the things that made us distinctive, the day-to-day being on this campus: the serendipity, the sense of learning to see behind each other’s eyes and hear from each other’s perspectives, not only in the classroom but in the dining halls, in our student organizations. To de-densify campus in a short time period, to try to deal with the reality of the situation, the uncertainty that it presented, and keep academic continuity. Keeping the academic mission going and then restarting and bringing people back to campus in a safe way with the protocols and the testing. That was the most challenging moment, but it was the moment where the University worked as one institution to move forward in a really powerful way.

You’ve been vocal in warning about the challenge higher education faces with declining trust. How do we rebuild that?

Rebuilding trust is not something that can be done overnight. Part of what we have to do is to make sure that our core is quite strong. The basic functions that people expect of a university around teaching and research must be rock-solid.

For a place like Harvard our legitimacy has depended on two things: a commitment to academic excellence and a commitment to meritocracy.

I would say there are three things that institutions like ours should be doing. One is that we convene excellence — in our faculty, our students, and staff. We should be highlighting excellence in bringing people together.

Second is our commitment to veritas. The reason we depend on academic excellence and meritocracy is that it gets you to a better understanding of the truth. We need to be an institution that lives with an uncomfortable truth rather than a comfortable delusion.

The third thing we need to do is streamline as an institution.

In our commitment to being a place where people across differences and backgrounds and experiences can openly and thoughtfully discuss complex issues, we have two responsibilities.

First, we have to make sure that if we’re asking families to invest in our education, we have to educate effectively.

Then there’s the moral responsibility. Any institution that takes on the responsibility of educating youth is a moral institution at the same time. And this cannot be politicized. When you are politicized, people believe you are producing biased research, not encouraging independent thinking, inculcating ideology, or not allowing for conversations on difficult topics.

Many in the community think one of your defining characteristics is your approachability. Is that something that you’ve always had, or did you develop that over time, and if so how?

It would probably surprise people that during the time I spent in college, I could count on my hands how many times I ate a meal with somebody. I had a small group of friends, but they kept very different hours than I did. They were all artists and painters, and so they would work like night owls. I was in social science and would get up early, go to the library to study.

I ate most of my meals by myself, but I never felt lonely. I had my books. I always felt I was in conversation with scholars like Max Weber, John Stuart Mill, Milton Friedman, and others. It wasn’t that I didn’t like people. I was using the four years I had in college to do something I didn’t think I’d ever have the time to do again — work on my thinking and understanding of the world.

In hindsight, I think I should have realized that I had just as much to learn from my peers. Something I learned from my mother and from Stephanie, my partner, is that everybody has an important and interesting story to tell.

My mother would always say, “Nobody’s better than you, but you’re also not better than anyone else.” That kind of humility is something that I just love my parents for because when I came to graduate school I just found myself being friends with and getting to know everybody — not only my peers, but also the custodial staff and the staff at the sociology department and at HBS. I just started realizing that everybody had such an interesting story to tell.

I would often look for the student who was sitting by themselves at a meal and think to myself, “I wish somebody would have sat with me at that time.” I always found myself drawn to sitting with students, which culminated in us becoming faculty deans at Cabot House. That’s when I became comfortable with being uncomfortable in terms of just sitting with somebody new and asking them a couple of questions, and it has become one of the most joyful parts of my day.

Something that you’ve often spoken about is being an immigrant kid who attended New York City public schools. Did that kid ever think he would be the dean of one of the world’s leading educational institutions?

I was born in India. My parents immigrated to the U.S. the same way millions of other families have for the same reason of trying to build a better life for their kids, and primarily for the educational opportunities.

My mother was a public school teacher in the Bronx, and my dad was an accountant for the city. I always remember that we would move because my mom would look at which schools had higher Regents scores, even a couple of blocks, so that we would be zoned for that school. I know firsthand the transformative power that education has — not just on the individual life, but the generational impact that it has.

My higher education experience began at SUNY Binghamton, and then I transferred to Cornell when a professor came up to me after class and said, “You’re doing well in this class. You should think about transferring to Cornell.” I was like, “Why?” He said, “I went there, and I think you would do really well.”

I had never had a teacher say something like that. It showed the power of a teacher seeing something in you that you didn’t even see yourself. This highlights the power of the mission. How do you create those opportunities for interaction where a conversation, question, or suggestion ends up shaping and changing the trajectory of your life?

After college, I worked in a small tech startup that ended up growing. Somebody from HBS came to write a case study on the company and that conversation led me to apply to graduate school. The next year I was at Harvard.

What does working on this campus mean to you now that you’ve been teaching and leading for so many years?

One of the things I love to do is just go to higher education institutions and visit campuses. I remember the first time seeing the libraries, the first place I would go when visiting. Visiting Cornell’s Sage Hall library, Widener and Baker libraries at Harvard, and dropping off my brothers at Dartmouth and Wesleyan.

To be in a place where the past is being honored, the present is being contended with, and where the future is being shaped through research is an incredible privilege. At times when things can feel challenging, we need to remember that colleges and universities are a candle in the darkness. We have a special responsibility to make sure that that candle is burning bright.

Harvard is not a perfect institution. I don’t think we should be a perfect institution because if we were coming close to that ideal, that would mean we are not playing a big enough game. Our aspirations should always run ahead of our reality.

Final question: Are we going to have to go to Allston to get a selfie?

It will be interesting to highlight the life of a professor, so I plan on continuing my Instagram. I think sharing our experiences on campus helps also with the element of rebuilding trust, because it takes away the mythology that institutions like ours don’t have people who are working hard and trying to do their best for the world. As former President Drew Faust said, “Harvard’s not trying to be the best in the world. It’s trying to be the best for the world.” My sense is that is what the community is, but you can’t tell that. You have to show it.

New results from the international Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) collaboration, which includes researchers from Harvard, suggest that dark energy, widely thought to be a “cosmological constant,” might be weakening over time. This suggests the standard model of how the universe works may need an update.

The fate of the universe hinges on the balance between matter and dark energy, which is the force thought to be driving the universe’s accelerating expansion. DESI tracks dark energy’s influence by studying how matter is spread across the universe. The new analysis, using the largest 3D map of our universe ever made, looked at dark energy’s influence over the past 11 billion years.

The results, using the first three years of collected DESI data, were announced in a March 19 press release from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Events in the very early universe left subtle patterns in how matter is distributed, a feature called Baryon Acoustic Oscillations. That pattern acts as a standard ruler, with its size at different times directly affected by how the universe is expanding. Measuring the ruler at different distances shows researchers the strength of dark energy throughout history.

Combining the data of more than 14 million galaxies and quasars with the results from other experiments, scientists have stronger evidence that the impact of dark energy may be evolving in unexpected ways.

The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) researchers, led by Harvard Professor Daniel Eisenstein and his group, were crucial contributors to the DESI collaboration in multiple ways, including co-developing algorithms and simulations that led to the latest results.

Cristhian Garcia Quintero is one of the collaboration leads on the cosmological interpretations of the results. Michael Rashkovetskyi performed calculations that are critical for the distance measurements. Claire Lamman is the co-chair of the DESI education and public outreach committee and helped create the visual material for the public. Eisenstein served as co-spokesperson of the collaboration from 2014 to 2020. 

DESI involves more than 900 researchers from over 70 institutions around the world and is managed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Berkeley Lab. The collaboration shared its findings in multiple papers to be posted on the online repository arXiv and in a presentation at the American Physical Society’s Global Physics Summit in Anaheim, California.

Alongside unveiling its latest dark energy results at the summit, the DESI collaboration also announced that its Data Release 1 is now available for anyone to explore. With detailed information on many millions of celestial objects, the data set will support a wide range of astrophysical research at CfA and elsewhere.

In addition to contributing to DESI’s cosmology goals, CfA researchers are using the collaboration to study galaxy evolution, the cosmic web, and the structure of the Milky Way. The DESI survey continues each clear night, extending its map of the cosmos and giving astronomers a continually improving view of the physics of the Universe.

Six decades later, Americans know a bit more about the CIA’s clandestine operations in the early 1960s, particularly in Cuba and Mexico, thanks to a new tranche of declassified documents concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy released last week.

The more than 77,000 pages released by the National Archives and Records Administration do not appear to contradict the Warren Commission’s conclusion that gunman Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when he shot Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. But historians say the papers hold important new details about the CIA’s involvement in foreign elections during the Cold War and its infiltration of Fidel Castro’s inner circle.

In this edited conversation with the Gazette, Fredrik Logevall, a professor of history and the Kennedy School’s Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs, highlights key details in the documents, shares what he’d still like to know, and offers some thoughts on why the assassination of JFK remains fodder for conspiracy theorists. A Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Logevall published the first book in a three-volume series on Kennedy in 2020. The second volume will be published next year.

What’s your impression of this new tranche of JFK records? Have you seen anything noteworthy so far?

With respect to the assassination, there’s little or nothing that’s new, at least in terms of what I’ve been able to see thus far. I can’t say I’m surprised — going in I didn’t expect we’d learn anything that would overturn our understanding of what happened in Dallas. The releases are, however, quite interesting on U.S. covert operations in the Cold War in the early 1960s. Some of them range beyond Kennedy’s years, but it’s for this period that they’re most interesting, especially with respect to Latin America. That’s actually been quite revealing to me.

“Interesting” in terms of what the CIA was doing or the volume of things they were doing back then?

In a way, it’s both. A lot of the “new” documents had been released before; the difference now is that they are unredacted. In 2017, for example, we got some really important CIA documents, but they would have certain words or passages blocked out. What’s been illuminating for me, even though it’s sometimes just a handful of words, is to have those words inserted. This matters, because as we know even a few words can change the meaning of a sentence or a passage dramatically. What we see with enhanced clarity is just how involved the United States was in other countries, not least in interfering in elections. In the past, country names or the names of leaders would have been omitted. Now they are there in black and white. There’s just something about seeing it say “Brazil” or “the Finnish elections,” for example, that makes this more clear, more stark. Also, you see just how large the presence of the CIA was. In certain embassies, those who are attached to the CIA could make up almost half the total personnel. Even those of us who are historians of the Cold War were somewhat taken aback by these figures. If you had asked me a week ago, I would have said that in this or that key embassy, there’s probably 20 percent max secretly attached to the CIA. I had no idea that it was sometimes approaching 40 or 50 percent.

Did we learn more about why Kennedy had a fraught relationship with the CIA?

We have not, though this could be buried in there and I just haven’t seen it yet. I thought we might learn more about that important relationship. You’re right to say that there was a wariness between JFK and the agency for various reasons. Some authors have exaggerated the depth and width of the schism, but it was there.

What’s something notable that you discovered?

In one CIA document, dated April 24, 1963, we learn that 14 Cuban diplomats were our agents. That’s quite significant — the degree to which there were people inside the Cuban government who were, in fact, working for the agency. In terms of the so-called Operation Mongoose, which was the effort to destabilize and overthrow the Cuban government, this helps us better understand to what extent were Cubans assisting in that effort. Later in the same document, we learn that there were two Cuban ambassadors on the payroll who provided first-rate reports and were closest to the bone in what Castro was thinking.

What are some key questions historians still have about the Kennedy assassination? Is there much left to learn?

I would like to know more about Oswald’s movements before Dallas. I would like to know more about his visit to Mexico City, which was in late September-early October 1963, just a few weeks before the assassination. He was flirting with defecting to Cuba, and so, in Mexico City, he met with both Cuban diplomats and Soviet diplomats. What exactly was said in those conversations? I’m interested, more broadly, in what U.S. intelligence agencies knew and didn’t know about his whereabouts in these weeks. That’s maybe the biggest issue for me.

The JFK assassination is often cited as the progenitor of modern conspiracy theory culture. Why is there still so much suspicion around it?

Part of it is simply because a president was killed, a president seemingly in the prime of life. I think we human beings have a natural inclination to believe that great events must have great causes. It seems somehow impossible that it was a lone misfit named Lee Oswald who took it upon himself to shoot the president. There’s got to be more to it than that, we tell ourselves. And so, the conspiracies will continue to fly. Regardless of what these documents would or would not have revealed, it would not have satisfied people who believe others were involved.

Someone asked me why we don’t seem to have the same consuming interest in, say, Lincoln’s or RFK’s assassination. It might have something to do with a few things. First there’s the fact that Oswald himself was killed two days later. Understandably, this makes people say, “How was that allowed to happen?” Second, the Warren Commission, which was a government commission formed to investigate the murder, was serious and thorough, but it made mistakes, notably in neglecting to interview everyone it might. Third, the fact that the assassination was captured on film might make a difference. So many of us have seen the Zapruder film, and it lives on in our mind, makes the whole thing more real, more eternal. Finally, there’s the oft-heard suggestion — the implications of which I’m still trying to sort out myself — that something important was lost on that day in Dallas, that it marked the end of American innocence somehow.

Put all of that together, maybe you have part of the explanation for why this particular event has been such fodder for conspiracy theories.

Two figures, a man and a woman, stand at a shoreline. They face away from the viewer and toward the sea, side by side and yet isolated from one another. 

Sometimes the woman is on the left. Sometimes she’s on the right. Sometimes these figures, and the rocky shore around them, are rendered in careful brushstrokes; other times, perhaps there is a sense of urgency, of haste, of canvas left untouched. 

This is “Two Human Beings (The Lonely Ones,)” one of the most famous motifs by the Norwegian painter and printmaker Edvard Munch (1863-1944.) Munch returned to this motif again and again over more than 40 years, in paintings, metal-plate etchings, and a series of woodcut prints, each with slight differences in color, shape, or technique. 

“He couldn’t let go,” said Elizabeth M. Rudy, Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints at the Harvard Art Museums and the co-curator of the exhibition “Edvard Munch: Technically Speaking,” on view through July 27. “There are so many more iterations of [‘Two Human Beings’] … in black and white, in grayscale, all violet, monochromatic but in different color schemes, totally different color combinations. There was one we saw in neon color, and the whole thing became psychedelic. With the intensity of variations, the motif starts to have less and less singularity and it can be a vehicle, an exploration of pretty much anything under the sun.” 

Munch’s repeated returns to the motif demonstrate the way his paintings informed his prints, and vice versa. He first painted it in 1892, but the painting was destroyed in 1901 in an explosion onboard a ship that was transporting his works for exhibition. When he next painted the motif in about 1906-1908 (above left), he had already experimented with woodblock prints of the theme. The figures appear in reverse from the original painting and were thus likely based on the printed versions, which he would have had as a ready reference. 

“He’s mixing a huge range of different painting techniques,” said Lynette Roth, Daimler Curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum, co-curator of the exhibition. Munch left some of the canvas unpainted; in some places, he applied paint thickly or scratched color away. It’s more than a demonstration of versatility, Roth said: “It also creates a kind of vibration, a sensation of these figures, a dynamism in the painting itself.”

The final version, made in about 1935 (above right), appears more spontaneous than its predecessor, with exposed lines from Munch’s preparatory sketch, large swatches of color, and areas of exposed canvas. 

“It was something we were hoping to highlight,” Roth said. “Why this return? What is he learning over time and through the different techniques?”

The Lonely Ones, together and apart

In his prints, Munch exploded “Two Human Beings” and put it back together again. He used a jigsaw method, inscribing his design onto a block of wood and using a fretsaw to cut each element into its own piece. Then, he could ink each piece separately, push them back together, and run the reunited composition through the press, creating endless variations of color.

Munch incorporated the male figure into the landscape but cut the woman into her own solitary block. 

“She almost feels like a doll,” Roth said. “You can take her out, as opposed to the man, who becomes a part of the printing of the landscape. In many of the prints, he begins to feel like he’s more a part of the landscape, whereas she is able to be this very singular figure and a very important one for Munch.” 

“Two Human Beings (The Lonely Ones)” has long been understood as a rumination on isolation, on the sense of loneliness that one can feel even in the company of someone else. But after spending time with Munch’s multiple iterations on the motif, Roth said she’s not so sure that’s the only interpretation. 

A savvy businessman, Munch originally titled the work simply “Two Human Beings.” But when others ascribed loneliness to the figures, Munch leaned into it.

“The more I engaged with this, I started to feel like they actually aren’t that lonely,” Roth said. “They’re connected to the landscape; they’re connected also to each other in the way that color unites them, and the way he’s inching toward her. … For me, it’s also companionship and contemplation, which doesn’t have to be devastating or alienating or cause for anxiety.”

A question of finishMunch’s contemporaries sometimes critiqued a lack of polish in his pieces. But Munch embraced the flaws, imperfections, and empty spaces in his work.

A new lens on Munch

Munch has long been understood as a deeply troubled artist whose struggles with mental health are apparent in psychologically evocative works like “The Scream.” But “Edvard Munch: Technically Speaking” invites viewers to disentangle Munch’s artwork from his biography and to view his recurring motifs not only as a window into his psyche but as another material, like paint or charcoal, a vehicle through which Munch explored his artistic practice. 

“We know that people will react emotionally or psychologically to what’s on view,” said Peter Murphy, Stefan Engelhorn Curatorial Fellow in the Busch-Reisinger Museum and co-curator of the exhibition. “Two things can be true: Munch did suffer psychologically; although he was wealthy and well-off, he did have a lot of crises in his life. And he was also a mastermind of getting his work out there and exploring it.”

Edvard Munch

(1863-1944)

Norwegian artist Edvard Munch was one of the most significant artists of the Modernist movement, and an innovator in printmaking, painting, and other arts. He is best known for his painting “The Scream,” which is seen as an expression of modern spiritual angst. He was active for more than 60 years, from the 1880s until his death.

“Edvard Munch: Technically Speaking” is on display through July 27 in the Special Exhibitions Gallery on Level 3 at the Harvard Art Museums. The exhibition showcases 70 works, primarily from the Harvard Art Museums collection. Thanks to a transformative gift from Philip A. and Lynn G. Straus, the museums now house one of the largest and most significant collections of artwork by Munch in the U.S. 

Over the course of his Harvard doctoral studies, Rob Devlin must have made 100 of a new kind of mini-lens, experimenting with materials and prototyping new designs to bend light like a traditional camera only using a series of tiny pillars on a millimeter-thin wafer.

This new device would be smaller, cheaper, and able to be mass produced — if demand ever warranted it — in semiconductor chip foundries.

Today, demand warrants it.

Metalenz, a startup founded in 2016 with exclusive rights to commercialize the device Devlin helped develop in the lab of Federico Capasso, the Robert L. Wallace Professor of Applied Physics, says some 100 million of its light-focusing metasurfaces have been made and are installed in an array of consumer electronic devices.

Metalenz — with Devlin now as CEO — wouldn’t disclose which companies are using its devices in their products, but at least one report from a company that does teardowns of consumer products, Yole Group, says metasurfaces are in the iPad, Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, and Google’s Pixel 8 Pro.

“It’s remarkable to think that something that started at Harvard — during my Ph.D. and with the work of all the other folks in the Capasso lab — is now out there and people are using it,” Devlin said. “There are many examples of university technology that have great promise, and having metasurfaces actually end up in real-world devices at the scale that we’re now talking about definitely has a great feel to it.”

Sam Liss, executive director of strategic partnerships at Harvard’s Office of Technology Development, said Metalenz emerged from a group that was cross-disciplinary, leveraging different scientific backgrounds and perspectives into a product that is breaking new ground.

“It’s really taking conventional optics, which have been around for a very, very long time, and disrupting that industry,” Liss said. “That’s what I think university startups are really great at: true disruption. [Former University President] Drew Faust once said that companies create new products; university research creates new industries. And that always resonated with me.”

Capasso’s early work on metasurfaces began in 2007 or 2008. By 2012, when Devlin arrived at the lab, the science was mostly figured out. In a 2011 paper in the journal Science, which has garnered more than 10,000 citations, Capasso and members of his lab showed they could tune nanostructures on the metasurface to control light at will.

Shortly after, they demonstrated the first metalens, which was able to focus light — albeit inefficiently — on a single spot. From there, Devlin added his expertise in materials and nanofabrication, working with other members of the lab to refine the product. And Capasso set the bar even higher: He wanted not only a product that worked, but one that could be mass-produced using existing fabrication methods so they could go to market quickly.

“In record time, metalenses went from a research prototype in 2016 to the creation of Metalenz in the same year and mass manufacturing for the consumer market in the following years,” Capasso said. “Kudos to Rob Devlin for successfully leading this transition.”

All along, researchers knew the device had the potential to disrupt the traditional business of making lenses from curved pieces of polished glass or plastic. As manufacturers crammed more and more features into smartphones, tablets, and other devices, it became clear that the real estate taken up by bulky lenses was a bottleneck to more advanced designs.

A major early victory for Metalenz came in 2021, when the startup signed a contract with STMicroelectronics to put its metasurfaces into STMicro’s FlightSense module.

The distance-measuring module uses near-infrared light for 3D sensing, and the metasurface is involved in both emitting light and in detecting its reflections. The time taken for the infrared light to bounce back provides key data in drawing the 3D picture. It is used in facial recognition, 3D room mapping, augmented reality, and similar applications.

Though these metasurfaces are not typically used for visual images, they can provide depth information that helps focus visual camera lenses.

Metalenz is currently based in Boston’s North End and has doubled in size to about 45 employees over the last three years. The company doesn’t need all that much space, because the manufacturing is left to large semiconductor foundries, which turn out more than a trillion chips a year for the global technology industry.

At Metalenz, Devlin said, the staff focuses on improving performance of their current product and developing what they hope will be the next big breakthrough: Polar ID.

Polar ID uses polarization of light to provide an additional layer of security for smartphones with a dramatic reduction in cost and size.

Devlin said that a traditional polarization camera is about 100 millimeters long and costs $500 to $1,000. Smaller versions have been created but are found only on top-end devices. Metalenz’s polarization metasurface is about 5 millimeters long and costs roughly $5, Devlin said, which would allow their deployment at low cost in many more devices.

“I can get a standard image of you. I can recognize the distance between your eyes and how far your eyes are from your nose and all of these key landmarks,” Devlin said. “But the polarization signature of you is unique, meaning that even if someone came with a perfect 3D mask of you and put it in front of the device, the polarization signature of that 3D mask would be different than your polarization signature.”

Polarization can be used in other applications as well. For example, skin cancer’s polarization signature is different from healthy skin, so it can be used to detect dangerous growths. It can also be used to monitor air quality.

“There are a lot of exciting things stemming from the power of the metasurface to take complex modules, shrink them down, and let you do entirely new things,” Devlin said.

As with any successful product, other companies are working to catch up, Devlin said. Metalenz’s strategy is to continue to improve current products and develop new ones that leverage the technology to do new and interesting things.

He also counted among advantages their continued relationship with Capasso — a Metalenz founder — providing a pipeline to new developments from his lab.

“There’s a lot of competition and folks are trying to catch up to us,” Devlin said. “The benefit we have is really the first applications we’ve already deployed, and we’ve already started to move on to something where we’re using even more of the unique aspects of the metasurface.”

When it comes to early detection of cognitive impairment, a new study suggests that the nose knows.

Researchers from Harvard-affiliated Mass General Brigham developed olfactory tests — in which participants sniff odor labels that have been placed on a card — to assess people’s ability to discriminate, identify, and remember odors. They found that participants could successfully take the test at home and that older adults with cognitive impairment scored lower on the test than cognitively normal adults. Results are published in Scientific Reports. 

“Early detection of cognitive impairment could help us identify people who are at risk of Alzheimer’s disease and intervene years before memory symptoms begin,” said senior author Mark Albers of the Laboratory of Olfactory Neurotranslation, the McCance Center for Brain Health, Department of Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital, and an assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. “Our goal has been to develop and validate a cost-effective, noninvasive test that can be performed at home, helping to set the stage for advancing research and treatment for Alzheimer’s.”

Albers and colleagues are interested in whether olfactory dysfunction — the sometimes-subtle loss of sense of smell — can serve as an early warning sign for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and traumatic brain injury. Albers helped found a company that makes the Aromha Brain Health Test, which is the test used by the research team to conduct the current study.

To evaluate the olfactory test, the team recruited English- and Spanish-speaking participants with subjective cognitive complaints (those with self-reported concerns about memory) and participants with mild cognitive impairment. They compared these participants’ test results with those from people who had no sense of smell and with cognitively normal individuals. 

The research team found that odor identification, memory, and discrimination declined with age. They also found that older adults with mild cognitive impairment had lower scores for odor discrimination and identification compared with older adults who were cognitively normal. Overall, the researchers found that test results were similar across English- and Spanish-speakers, and participants performed the test equally successfully regardless of whether they were observed by a research assistant.

The authors note that future studies could incorporate neuropsychological testing and could follow patients over time to see if the tool can predict cognitive decline.

“Our results suggest that olfactory testing could be used in clinical research settings in different languages and among older adults to predict neurodegenerative disease and development of clinical symptoms,” said Albers.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Andrew Zonneveld sees teaching as the most important job in the world.

“Doctors are great. But doctors are only doctors because they had great teachers,” said the first-generation college student from North Carolina.

Zonneveld ’26, a government concentrator with a secondary in education studies, is attending Harvard College on full financial aid. Graduating debt-free means he can prioritize public service.

“I would love to be a public school teacher for a few years,” said the Leverett House resident.

“He talks a great deal about going back to North Carolina and helping the schools there,” said his mom, Jennifer Eirich. “I think it has a lot to do with the strong connections he formed with the teachers he had as a kid. But I guess I think there’s something bigger out there for him. Maybe he’ll go and change the educational system for the whole country. Maybe he’ll go into politics.”

Zonneveld, who grew up on a military base and counts many servicemembers in his family, has been interested in the intersection of education and policy from an early age. He recalled pitching an elementary school teacher on forming the school’s first student government.

“I won president in third grade or fourth grade,” he said. “In my speech, I promised the principal would kiss a pig if we raised enough money through Box Tops — remember those?”

Entering Onslow Early College High School — where students work toward their diplomas while earning free credits from Coastal Carolina Community College — provided Zonneveld with his next opening. He spent the summer before ninth grade drafting a constitution for the student government association he later helped launch at the newly opened public high school.

“I could tell from the beginning how motivated he was,” remembered Hannah Padilla, a former guidance counselor there. “Within a week or two, he had come out of his shell and was just unapologetically Andrew: a dedicated student who knew exactly what he wanted from life.”

The Class of 2022 valedictorian assumed he would attend North Carolina’s flagship public university. The school offered him a generous scholarship. “But it was still going to cost me 15 or 20 grand per year,” Zonneveld said.

Opening an acceptance letter from Harvard College was a tearful occasion — and a total surprise after applying on a last-minute whim. “Not in a million years did someone from our county think something like this could happen,” Eirich said.

The family had been concerned about covering college costs, so the University’s offer came as a big relief.  “Financial aid is really the only reason I’m here at Harvard,” he said. “It’s the only way I can afford it.”

The support also means Zonneveld’s attentions are no longer so splintered. He had trained as a lifeguard in his early teens, and sometimes worked full-time at area pools while attending high school.

At Harvard, Zonneveld has continued teaching aquatics at the Malkin Athletic Center. But only because he still enjoys passing on his knowledge. “I don’t have to work crazy hours,” he said.

Help from Harvard also made other opportunities possible. Zonneveld was able to complete an internship last summer at a research institute in Berlin with the support of the Government Department. He also traveled to Thailand and Vietnam with Harvard Model Congress to teach high schoolers about policy and public speaking. Over spring break, he helped the organization run a government simulation with teens in Brussels.

“Financial aid didn’t just bring me here,” Zonneveld said. “It allowed me to travel the world, to go home and see my family during breaks. It allowed me to have access to opportunities I would have never had anywhere else.”

Maryam Guerrab says her upbringing, as one of five children of Algerian immigrants, fueled her passion for advocacy.

“Public service work is incredibly important to me, I think in large part because of how I grew up. I come from a large immigrant family whose parents are both blue-collar workers,” Guerrab said. “I’ve seen a lot of the obstacles that different communities face through both my personal experiences and professional experiences I’ve pursued.”

At Harvard, Guerrab is concentrating in government on the political economy track.

“I thought that studying government, learning more about the local and economic institutions that shape the world we live in today, informing how many people lead their lives and the problems they face, would be the best way to advocate for people’s rights,” she said.

Guerrab, now just months away from graduation, was apprehensive about applying.

“I did not think Harvard was an option for me. It seemed this almost mystical place where the upper echelons of society would go, and that was not me,” said the 21-year-old from North Carolina. “I was privileged enough to know that I was going to go to college, but I thought it would be a state school or somewhere nearby.”

She learned about Harvard’s financial aid program in high school but joked with her family that she’d probably never get in anyway.

“There was this confidence from them when I told them I was applying,” she said of her parents. “I was like, ‘Mama, I don’t really know if you realize that very few people get in, and I don’t know if I can do it.’ And it was always, ‘It’s fine! It’ll be OK.’”

Mama turned out to be right.

Guerrab said getting assistance and not having to worry about paying for college has allowed her “to thrive as a student, pursue opportunities that potentially wouldn’t have been possible.”

The senior has received two Priscilla Chan Summer Service Stipends and hopes to apply again this summer. The stipend allowed her to travel to Belgrade and Serbia, and to work with the refugee organization IDEAS: The Center for Research and Development of Society.

She also received a launch grant, which is part of the support students on full financial aid receive to help pay for post-Harvard needs such as Medical College Admission Test-prep guides (she is planning to apply in May) and books.

She later added: “I recognize all the privilege that I have been given, and I want to use it to give back.”

Guerrab said she felt she has made the biggest impact during her College career as a case management director for Y2Y Network, which provides overnight housing for unhoused young adults in Greater Boston. The opportunity allowed her to engage with young people in the program and mentor other Harvard student volunteers.

“What drives my persistent pursuit of both my academics and community service work is my passion to give the best service I can and to take advantage of every opportunity,” Guerrab said. “Harvard is a once-in-a-lifetime experience — on the academic end, [being able to] learn from people with such diverse experiences. Harvard provides me an opportunity to learn as much as I can about the fields that I’m passionate about.”

She continued: “Taking what I learned in the classroom to inform how I’m interacting with the communities that I serve is super important.”

Between classes and volunteer work, Guerrab stepped out of her comfort zone and joined the mountaineering club on campus. She acknowledged that growing up, outdoor activities weren’t as accessible.

“I didn’t even think it was something I wanted to explore,” she said. “The Mountaineering Club was definitely something that I was like, ‘I’m just gonna try something crazy and see what happens.’”

Guerrab said her first mountaineering trip to the Boston Basin of the North Cascade National Park in Washington was a mental, physical, and personal “growth moment” that made her aware of her resilience.

“It was something that taught me that I can really do anything, even in really hard moments,” she said.

Merlin D’souza learned about artificial wombs in her high school Career Technical Education biotechnology class. That experience led her to look for unique biomedical programs when considering colleges. Harvard’s Human Developmental and Regenerative Biology Department immediately caught her attention.

“They were working with stem cells and doing projects that focused on the regenerative aspect of medicine,” said the senior from Casa Grande, Arizona. “As someone who wants to go into medicine and wants to be part of the technology and development [side], that was really exciting for me.”

D’souza, a concentrator in human developmental and regenerative biology and global health and health policy, has really enjoyed her time at Harvard, but the road to Cambridge was not entirely smooth. Her family was unsure how they would be able to afford paying for school. Immigrants from India, her father left school at a young age to begin working to support his family, while her mother was also unable to continue her education.

“My mom had a love and dream to go and study, but she had to help her mom in the rice fields and the farm. She always was like, ‘Wherever you want to shoot, however high you want to go, we’ll support you.’ Harvard was that [for me],” she said.

Getting full financial aid from Harvard allowed her to attend worry-free. “Tuition and the grants that I’ve been able to receive have been super helpful, because I’m not shifting the burden on my parents. That was a big concern for me,” she said. “Having that support as I study and go through this hard curriculum has been such a relief.”

D’souza took full advantage of the opportunities she found. During the last four years, she has traveled to India to teach at under-resourced schools, conducted research on mental health with the help of the Boston Public Health Commission, and presented research to the Massachusetts Association for Mental Health.

Financial aid assistance not only has made attendance possible, but also helped D’souza pursue medical school. In the fall of her junior year, she received a launch grant designed to help students transition from Harvard. With that money she was able to pay for the Medical College Admission Test and cover the costs of applications. She highlighted other support available to financial aid students like herself, including funds to buy a winter coat.

“The reason I want to go to medical school is mostly because I want to help populations from the communities I came up in. My parents were immigrants. They didn’t have access to the best medical resources,” she said.

Outside of academics, D’souza has found ways to give back. She serves as a peer advising fellow with the Advising Programs Office, where she supports first-years as they transition to college. She also volunteers at the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter and at Boston Children’s Hospital.

“We get a chance to provide support to and play with a kid going through dialysis. It’s really the highlight of my week,” she said.

After graduation, D’souza will take a gap year to teach or do research before starting medical school, a break that she said wouldn’t have been possible if she was saddled with a lot of loan debt.

“One thing that people don’t think about with tuition assistance is that most people need it,” she said. “Tuition assistance has such a long-reaching impact. I’m able to have this education and pursue a degree in a profession that helps to give back. It’s kind of like a full circle.”

A recent paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine calls for regulations to protect customers’ personal and genetic data in light of biotech company 23andMe’s uncertain future.

The genetic testing firm became wildly popular after launching in 2007, with millions of customers sending in saliva samples for analysis to learn about their ancestry and genetic makeup.

The company was valued at $6 billion, or $17.65 a share, shortly after going public in 2021. It has since fallen to about $48 million, or $1.78 per share, after a 2023 data breach and resignation of some board members. The firm said in January that it’s exploring “strategic alternatives,” including a sale of the company or assets, restructuring, or business combination, among other options.

In this edited conversation, I. Glenn Cohen, one of the paper’s authors and faculty director of the Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School, explains the legal landscape surrounding genetic data, the reasons for more consumer protection laws, and the steps for consumers to protect their personal and genetic data.

If 23andMe were to file for bankruptcy protection, what might happen with the genetic data of 14 million people the company holds?

As 23andMe faces significant financial distress and might be purchased directly or go bankrupt and its assets sold, all of the genetic and health information provided by people is a valuable asset to the company. Many people have used services like 23andMe, Ancestry.com, and others which are direct-to-consumer genetic tests companies, to answer questions about their ancestry or their genetic code.

But in the course of answering these questions for themselves, they’ve also contributed to these huge genetic databases. Our concern is that they may end up in the hands of somebody other than 23andMe, in a way that many people who have given their information to 23andMe never contemplated and might object to.

What are the possible case scenarios, and what are your concerns?

One is about data security. We saw that 23andMe itself was subject to a massive data breach in 2023, and if the company that takes over the data lacks good data security, there’s a possibility of breach.

Interestingly, once upon a time, the Pentagon told military personnel not to use these at-home DNA kits because it was concerned about national security. A more quotidian concern is that your genetic information might become available to others, and it’s possible you could become reidentified.

To give you an example from a study several years ago, a number of researchers used genetic data to try to identify, through what’s called genome-wide association studies (GWAS) technology and approach, what parts of the genome were associated with being gay. Many people who had given their genetic information were understandably upset at the idea this could be a possible use of their information.

So, while customers have made the decision to share with 23andMe, from whom they get a lot of benefit, they really have very little say about what will happen should the company be taken over or should the company go bankrupt, and its assets sold.

Do federal health privacy regulations offer privacy protections to consumers?

The Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act (HIPAA) is the law that, among other things, when you speak to your doctor, creates rules about what can be shared under what context.

The problem is that HIPAA’s definition of covered entities and business associates means that when you have provided information, including your genetic data, not to a hospital system, not to a physician, but to a direct-to-consumer company like 23andMe, you are not covered by HIPAA. You are treated by the law essentially as a consumer, not as the patient.

Now, there are other federal laws that cover you a little bit. The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act prevents health insurers, but also employers, from using genetic information in a way that is discriminatory. So that kind of law still will apply, but health privacy laws at the federal level won’t directly apply when you are dealing with a private company like 23andMe.

What about the privacy protections 23andMe offers to consumers?

We should say at the front end that it asks its consumers for consent to use their data for research purposes. There is the option not to consent although roughly 80 percent of the consumers have given consent.

The consumer agreements have a privacy statement that says all U.S. customers have certain rights, such as a right to opt out of the storage of saliva samples and the right to request the deletion of their account. It also says that it doesn’t share individual-level information, on diseases or genotypes, or de-identify information voluntarily with insurance companies, employers, public databases, or law enforcement agencies without a subpoena.

But the company shares personal information with service providers and contractors for sample analysis, marketing, and analytics. Also, the privacy statement reserves the company’s right to transfer customers’ personal information in the event of a sale or bankruptcy, and customers can’t protect their data from being accessed, sold, or transferred as part of that transaction.

Can bankruptcy laws offer some safeguards to 23andMe consumers?

One of the paper’s co-authors, Melissa Jacoby, is a bankruptcy law scholar. My specialty is health law, but I’ll do my best to explain. Many companies that have held sensitive information have filed for bankruptcy, and in the course of that bankruptcy they’ve sold consumer data to a third party.

Bankruptcy law offers some protections. Bankruptcy itself is a public process. There’s attention from the public, and sometimes regulators, like the [Federal Trade Commission] or state attorney generals, can get involved in cases and can seek to enter the bankruptcy proceedings. A federal court oversees a bankruptcy, and the U.S. Trustee Program, an agency within the Department of Justice, can sometimes get involved as well.

In some instances, bankruptcy law had required a consumer privacy ombudsperson to investigate a sale and determine whether it’s keeping with the bankrupt company’s privacy statements, as well as the law.

These are some protections, but they’re not perfect. One thing we want to highlight is that when most people have given their genetic information, they’ve never thought about this, and we just want people to pay attention to it.

What are your policy recommendations to protect consumers’ personal and genetic data?

The U.S. has a federal health privacy law that’s a bit out of date compared to our peer countries in Europe. One solution to this problem would be to have more general data privacy protection that would cover all personal data, including genetic data, and that would apply in bankruptcy cases as well.

There have been many attempts to get Congress to comprehensively update federal privacy law, including health privacy laws. They haven’t really succeeded. So, we’re not holding our breath.

A more targeted approach might be thinking about expanding the scope of the HIPAA law to cover companies like 23andMe, or potentially expanding what the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act covers, in terms of discrimination and genetic information. New regulations could also address instances when you have the overlap of a company that has genetic information and goes bankrupt. That’s what we’d like to see. Whether it will happen, I’m not sure.

What could consumers do in the meantime?

Going forward, I would think about these things as you decide whether the kind of information you are going to get from a direct-to-consumer company like 23andMe is worth the risks.

Also, when you are given the right to choose not to consent to sharing of data, I think that’s worth thinking about. And if this is something that worries you, this might be a time to go in and delete that information in your account, even though it’s not a perfect solve.

There are a lot of reasons why people are curious about their ancestry or genetic information. My hope is that this experience might also cause companies to be more privacy sensitive. I would love to see a space where people can have their cake and eat it too, to get the information they want without feeling as though that information might put them at risk if there’s a bankruptcy and the like.

The rent is too dang high. A global crisis led to lifesaving innovations. Sugar cravings are real, but sugar addiction might not be. Loving your job has downsides.

1. What percent of fully employed renters were cost-burdened as of 2023, according to recent research?

25

36

43

49

2. When did America’s public-private biomedicine partnership begin?

1918 Spanish flu pandemic

World War II

Korean War

Cuban missile crisis

3. True or false: Quitting sugar cold turkey is the best way to manage cravings.

True

False

4. What is a potential downside to a highly passionate workplace, according to recent Business School research?

It puts less-passionate employees under pressure to perform

Women can be viewed negatively for expressing passion for their jobs, while men are viewed more positively

Spikes in passion for the job can lead to burnout

All of the above

Δ

Do you ever find yourself feeling tired or struggling to concentrate while at the office? In “Healthy Buildings: How Indoor Spaces Can Make You Sick — or Keep You Well,” Harvard public health and business experts Joseph Allen and John Macomber explore how the places we spend most of our time — our homes, workplaces, and schools — affect our well-being, focus, and problem-solving ability. Allen helped us develop the following quiz based on his research on indoor air quality.

Step 1 of 10

10%

1. How much of their lives do Americans on average spend indoors?

80%

65%

90%

75%

2. Which workplace change boosted workers’ cognitive function in a 2015 Harvard study?

Switch to open office layout

Building increased air ventilation

Water filters installed in the kitchen

3. Building air ventilation rates shifted in the 1970s, with the main goal of:

Reducing asthma attacks

Improving cognitive function

Limiting complaints related to body odors (“bioeffluents”)

Preventing transmission of influenza

4. Where do you breathe most outdoor air pollution?

Outdoors

Indoors

5. If you live in an apartment, how much of the indoor air is coming from your neighbor’s apartment?

0%

1%

9%

30%

6. How many opportunities can you identify to make this building healthier?

3

5

More than 10

7. How much of the air you breathe indoors just came out of the lungs of others in the room?

<1%

1-3%

3% or more

8. Actions you can take to reduce spread of infectious diseases indoors:

Bring in more outdoor air

Increase the level of filtration

Use portable air cleaners with HEPA filers

All of the above

9. Dust is hormonally active. True or false?

True

False

10. Of the 80,000-plus chemicals available for commerce, how many have been banned by the EPA since 1976?

200

6

33

Δ

Nearly 300 talented artists from across the University are displaying their work in the annual Harvard Staff Art Show. Created as a venue where staff can share their creativity with the broader community, the show is now in its fifth year. Below are profiles of eight of these creatives who were happy to chat about their projects.

Scott Murry

Designer, Illustrator, and Photographer

Senior Designer, Harvard Library

Scott Murry said his “Find Yourself,” part of a series of monoline-style digital drawings about mental health created during the pandemic, is about “trying to think about who you are with intentionality.”

Murry’s interest in the visual arts was nurtured in ninth and 10th grades by teachers who motivated and challenged him to achieve. He went to the Art Academy of Cincinnati and Art Institute of Boston and “was wild about editorial illustration and children’s book illustration” before taking on various roles at design agencies, in environmental design, and at the Weekly Dig.

These days Murry is being intentional with his time, drawing, designing, doing concert photography, publishing a children’s book, and working on a photo book of his son, Elliott. He is particularly excited by the design possibilities of the double Ls and double Ts in his son’s name.

Eve Radovsky

Cabinet and Furniture Maker

Faculty Assistant, Harvard Law School

In 2018, Eve Radovsky enrolled in a full-time program in cabinet- and furniture-making. “I also have always really appreciated furniture design, and I’ve always enjoyed working with my hands,” she said. Her white-oak-and-maple piece in the show was inspired by an image of a blanket chest created by Thomas Dennis in the 17th century.

Radovsky used carving gouges to remove sections of wood for the front and small metal stamps to create the background. She also used several different types of stains to “age” the piece in a way that mimicked the more dangerous process of fuming.

She has also been a passionate knitter for the past 10-plus years and is currently working on creating a sweater for herself.

Yuwei Li

Drawer

Neurotechnology Engineer, The Center for Brain Science

Yuwei Li likes drawing cute animals, including her budgie, Lou, who died right before Thanksgiving. For her, “drawing is a way to relax and be happy,” and the picture she chose to display is meant both to remind her of her pet and thank him for being a part of her life.

“This is actually based on a photo that I took from my cell phone … One day, he was just, like, winking at me. And then I happened to capture him winking with my camera.”

Li, shown in the Center for Brain Science’s machine shop in Harvard’s Northwest Building, uses her talents at work to design and fabricate equipment for approximately 40 different labs. Her latest after-hours project — inspired by “Star Wars” fans she met at Comic-Con in San Diego — is a 3-D print of a one-to-one scale model of R2-D2, which she hopes to mount on wheels and use to carry her tools.

Veronica Bagnole

Embroiderer

Digital Project Manager, Harvard Graduate School of Design

For Veronica Bagnole, embroidery is a calming and historically rich artform. When she isn’t overseeing the GSD’s website and supporting a team of 100 content editors, she works on embroidery pieces that can take hundreds of hours to complete.

Bagnole’s piece shows a woman from the late 18th to early 19th century, whose likeness she created from AI images that she modified to create an outline before adding texture during the roughly 250 to 300 hours it took to embroider.

“When people come to this piece, I want them to look at it and think, ‘Who is that woman? Why did she have her portrait done?’”

Bagnole said embroidery deserves more recognition as not just a craft but a historical art form that allows her to honor and “connect with generations from the past.”

Stanislav Karachev

Dancer and Poet

Energy Performance Engineer, Harvard Medical School

When Stanislav Karachev was invited to dance at a venue in New Hampshire, he knew he had to go big. He ended up creating the performance featured in this year’s art show, a mix of poetry, music, and dance he used to express his feelings during a breakup.

Karachev decided that he would incorporate a mirror and engage with the audience during the performance. “Everyone thinks, ‘Oh, you’re like, I’m doing a solo. It’s all about me.’ And it’s not. It’s about the audience and the connection between the performer or performers with the audience.”

Karachev recorded his poem and mixed his backing track with the help of a neighbor who also works at Harvard. He chose krump as the dance style because of its high energy. Karachev said he ended up impressed with where the intensity drove him: “I didn’t know I could move like that.”

John Buonomo

Astrophotographer

Senior Cloud Architect, Harvard University Health Services

John Buonomo’s earliest attempts at astrophotography were in 1978. The self-taught artist said he became fascinated with his subject at 9 years old when a neighbor showed him a view of Jupiter and Saturn through his refractor. Buonomo’s first photographs using film and a manual tracking scope weren’t very successful, but the advent of digital technology “changed everything.”

These days Buonomo uses dedicated cooled astro CCD cameras, high-end optics, auto guiding, and computer-controlled scripting to create his work. Once he’s captured an image, he uses specialized software to stack multiple exposures and adjust other parameters to reveal faint structures. He calls the balance of technical skill and artistic vision “what makes astrophotography both demanding and deeply rewarding.”

Toru Nakanishi

Photographer and Sculptor

Exhibition Production Specialist at the Harvard Art Museums

Toru Nakanishi’s love of photography started in college, when he began creating black-and-white photos in a darkroom. But when he no longer had access to a darkroom and couldn’t justify the cost of a digital camera, he began making images on a flatbed scanner.

This year’s show includes one of Nakanishi’s flatbed scans of ramen noodles. To create his images, Nakanishi laid the noodles on the scanner and turned off all the lights to get a black background. For other images, “I made a flatbed scanner with a glass wall on top of it. You can fill it with the water and then float the item in it and then scan it.”

This photograph shown is a piece of a much larger noodle series, one image of which is currently in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts.

Fionnuala Gerrity

Ceramicist

Conservation Technician at Harvard Library Preservation Services

Fionnuala Gerrity first tried ceramics as a kid, but returned to it before the pandemic by taking courses at Indigo Fire in Belmont. They were surprised by the result: “I had no idea it would grow into an entire body of work, like a side gig to my professional career.”

Today, “everything that I do is based on local forest ecosystems,” Gerrity said. Using slabs as the primary construction method, building the vessel first, and finally adding sculpted elements, Gerrity tries to depict nature as accurately as possible. During the photoshoot, they shared a finished tea set decorated with “three different moths that preferentially associate with bitter nut hickory.”

“I love the idea that they might inspire people to look a little bit more closely at what’s around them,” Gerrity said.

Many European leaders believe they can no longer rely on the U.S. for the high level of defensive support they have counted on for decades now that President Donald Trump, a longtime critic of NATO and the European Union, has returned to office.

In this edited conversation, Richard D. Hooker Jr., a senior associate at the Belfer Center’s Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship at Harvard Kennedy School, discusses what Europe has to do to get ready for that new reality.

A distinguished veteran, Hooker served in national security roles during the Trump, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George H.W. Bush administrations and had been on the faculty of National Defense University, National War College, and U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

You recently wrote that Europe has to shore up its own defense because it is no longer a priority for the U.S. How do things look at this moment?

I think for sure the threat to European security is much greater. The reason is the perception that the U.S. is disengaging and, in some ways, working with Russian President Vladimir Putin. That encourages Putin and dismays the Europeans, which has a downside and an upside.

The U.S. has worked for decades to suppress any notions of European strategic autonomy. We always thought we’d be the primary security provider in Europe, and we like being the leaders of NATO. So to that extent there’s been very halting progress at developing a separate or independent capability in Europe.

There’s an article in The Wall Street Journal that argues that Europe’s got way more in the way of forces and in wealth than Russia. But when you really peel the onion back, there are a lot of problems with that thesis.

The first is that readiness across Europe is quite low, even among the major powers — the French, the British, the Germans, the Italians. They would struggle to put a single army combat division in the field in less than 60 or 90 days. They probably could not put a second in the field for much longer after that.

The U.K. had 66 divisions in World War I, it would struggle to put one out in 90 days to defend the Baltic states. So that’s a pretty low level of readiness.

Why isn’t it more robust?

The militaries across Europe have gotten much, much smaller. In the last 30 years, they’ve gone to volunteer militaries, which are much more expensive, and you can’t generate reserves with volunteer militaries. And we’ve seen from Ukraine that modern warfare, no surprise, causes a lot of casualties and consumes a lot of resources. So that’s a problem.

But the real problem is what we call the enablers. It is all the below-the-line capabilities that enable you to actually fight. This is logistics, air defense, medical support, artillery at the corps level — those kinds of things. You just don’t find those in Europe.

And so, it’s really hard to put a force together that could deter or stand up to the Russian Federation in a major war because those capabilities are either absent or very much attenuated.

Now, the overarching issue for everything is, if the U.S. disengages and withdraws its nuclear umbrella, there’s really no answer in Europe for that. There just isn’t.

That would put the European nations, and particularly those in the east, under great, great pressure, because Putin would threaten to use tactical nuclear weapons, and there’s nothing to deter that. There’s no response other than the U.S. umbrella. And there are those who argue, even now, in practice, de facto, that umbrella’s been withdrawn.

Is Europe correct to worry the U.S. nuclear umbrella has been withdrawn?

Has it been withdrawn already? I don’t know. Is it reliable? I wouldn’t think so.

If Putin were to threaten or actually use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine or, let’s say in Estonia, would the administration respond with nuclear threats of its own? Personally, I have my doubts. I worked in the first 18 months of the Trump administration. I was the senior NATO guy, which is not a comfortable job to have, and I have my doubts. I’ll just leave it at that.

What are Europe’s biggest defensive shortcomings, ones that hurt its strategic autonomy?

No. 1, of course, is the nuclear question.

No. 2 is they don’t really have higher level formations. They have a lot of corps headquarters, but they’re not real corps headquarters. They don’t have the artillery, the air defense, the engineers, all that stuff that you need to fight at the corps level.

No. 3 is the readiness of the formations they do have is quite low, so they can’t push out meaningful forces in 14 days the way the U.S. can.

It’s very easy to think of Europe as one entity, but it’s really not. It’s 44 different polities, and they all see the world a little bit differently.

The eastern flank countries, they all see the world the same. The Poles, the Baltic states, the Nordics, they all border Russia. They’re spending a lot of money; they’re going back to conscription; they’re getting better every day. They see the world the way it really is. All the other nations, not so much.

Do you think European leaders are genuinely motivated to take action?

I think it’s underway. I really do. But it’s not the kind of thing that you can solve overnight.

One clear sign is that defense spending continues to rise in many places. Not in every place in Europe — there are still some key states that don’t even make 2 percent. But the big ones have all said, “We’re going to work toward 3 percent,” and their budgets do seem to be rising.

Collectively, the Europeans hit the 2 percent target in 2024, and they have been increasing spending quite a bit over the last four or five years, but it hasn’t translated yet into actual capability.

So many people, even experts, just repeat this mantra that “the Europeans aren’t spending enough.” Actually, they spend more than four times more on defense than Russia does. Russia spent about $125 billion — as far as we can tell — in 2024, and the European allies spent about $500 billion, which is a lot.

So, I don’t see spending as the issue. How that money is spent is the real issue.

Which countries have nuclear weapons and might others decide to acquire some in light of the changing landscape?

The British have about 400 deployable warheads. These are essentially strategic warheads. They have three ballistic missile submarines.

The French have about the same number deployed in about the same way. Those can threaten the 10 largest Russian cities. Those are strategic weapons; they’re not intended to try to take out Russian missile silos.

The Russians have more than 10 times that many warheads. Are those deterrents effective for those countries? I think probably yes. Could they, or would they, extend their nuclear umbrella to neighbor states or to allies? I’m doubtful about that.

There’s been discussion in Germany about generating a nuclear capability, but it seems clear the Germans are not going to do that.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the Poles might be looking at that. The Ukrainians, who do have a lot of advanced technology and used to have nuclear weapons, it’s possible the Ukrainians might think about developing some kind of nuclear capability. Outside of those cases, I just don’t see it.

Are there any steps Europe can take immediately to defend itself?

No. 1: They can return to conscription because that enables you to grow your forces quickly and generate reserves.

No. 2: It’s really hard to move forces across Europe. This problem is called military mobility. Every time you cross a national boundary, or even a provincial boundary, you get stopped. There’s a paperwork check. The rail gauges are not uniform across Europe, so you might get as far as Poland and then you have to unload everything and put it on a different train. So military mobility is a real issue.

No. 3: Interoperability, which means can we all work together on the battlefield, is a real challenge.

All the Allies can’t talk on the battlefield securely to each other, and they can’t pass data securely on the battlefield because they have different systems.

And No. 4 is just be ready. You’ve got to be serious about the problem and attack it. I do think they’re getting more serious. The question is how fast can they do it, and is there going to be more Russian aggression on European territory before they get there?

Excerpted from “Memorial Days” by Geraldine Brooks, Radcliffe Fellow ’06, visiting lecturer ’21, published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. 

May 27, 2019
West Tisbury

“Is this the home of Tony Horwitz?”

 Yes

“Who am I speaking to?”

 This is his wife

That is exact. The rest is a blur.

“Collapsed in the street … tried to resuscitate at the scene … brought to the hospital … couldn’t revive him.”

And, so, now he’s in the OR. And, so, now we’ve admitted him for a procedure. And, so, now we’re keeping him for observation.

So many things that logically should have followed.

But she says none of these things. Instead, the illogical thing: He’s dead.

No.

Not Tony. Not him. Not my husband out on the road energetically promoting his new book. My husband with the toned body of a six-day-a-week gym rat. The 60-year-old who still wears clothes the same size as the day I met him in his twenties. My husband, younger than I am — hilarious, bursting with vitality. He’s way too busy living. He cannot possibly be dead.

The resident’s voice is flat, exhausted. She is impatient with me as I ask her to repeat what she has just said. It is, she tells me, the end of her shift. She gives me a number for the doctor who is coming on duty in this ER, 500 miles away in Washington, D.C. She can’t get me off the phone fast enough.

But Tony — I need to see him. Where will he be when I get there?

“We can’t keep a body in the ER. It will be moved to the hospital morgue to be picked up by the DC medical examiner.”

It. A body. She means Tony.

So how will I see him? I’m in Massachusetts, on an island. It’s going to take me hours to get there —

She cuts me off.

“The DC police will need to talk to you. Make sure they can reach you.”

And then she is gone.

At some moment in this call, I stood up from my desk. When the phone rang, at 18 minutes past one, I’d only just sat down to work after a morning of distractions. I’d had a happy conversation on the phone with my older son, a recent college graduate, adventuring around the world and about to board a plane in Manila for the eight-hour flight to Sydney, where he would stay with my sister. A friend, Susanna, had come to borrow or return a book — I can’t recall which. We’d gone down to the paddock to throw hay to the horses and hung around there, draped on the split rails, chatting.

I’d read a long email from Tony about the visit he’d made the day before to the Virginia village where we lived for 10 years. It was mostly unpunctuated, gossipy, catching me up on the doings of our former neighbors — their tribulations with dry wells and divorces (“she refers to him as her was-band”). The email concluded:

“didn’t wish self back there (if for no other reason, 90 degrees and 100 percent humidity, and still May) but heartened that it seems to have gently evolved while keeping history and quirk. tomorrow back to the grind and am now 2-3 episodes behind on “Billions” so you’ll have rewatch upon return. love and hugs”

I’d hit send on my reply and finally opened the file titled Horse, the novel I was supposed to be writing.

Then, the phone.

Another distraction. I considered letting it go to voicemail.

But maybe there was a question my older son had forgotten to ask. My younger son was away at boarding school, sitting for his end-of-year exams. Perhaps he needed something. I had to pick up.

The caller ID was hard to read in the bright sunlight. Only as I brought the handset close could I make out gw hsp on the display. Don’t tell me I picked up a darn fundraising call. …

Now the dial tone burred. I stared at the handset. My legs started to shake. But I couldn’t sit down. I paced across the room, feeling the howl forming in my chest. I needed to scream, weep, throw myself on the floor, rend my garments, tear my hair.

But I couldn’t allow myself to do any of those things. Because I had to do so many other things.

I stood there and suppressed that howl. Because I was alone, and no one could help me. And if I let go, if I fell, I might not be able to get back up.

In books and movies no one gets this news alone. Someone comes to the door. Someone makes sure you’re sitting down, offers you water, asks whom you’d like them to call.

But no one had done me this kindness. A tired young doctor had picked up my husband’s cell phone, on which he had never set up a passcode, and hit the speed dial for home.

The first brutality in what I would learn is a brutal, broken system.

February 23
Essendon

The small prop plane takes off from Melbourne’s Essendon Airport. Suburban rooftops, container terminals, the industrialized mouth of the Yarra River. And then we pierce a flat layer of cloud and the view I’d hoped for, the glittering, island-studded Bass Strait, is obscured. All I can do is watch the mesmerizing blur of the propeller. A smear of concentric circles. The unlikely physics of flight.

I am headed to a shack on the farthest end of Flinders Island to do the unfinished work of grieving. I have come to realize that what I did that day in late May 2019 and what I was obliged to do in the days and months that followed has exacted an invisible price. I am going to this remote island to pay it.

In the confines of the small plane I overhear snatches of conversation from my fellow travelers:

“I’ve got a hundred acres, it’s quite a big bit of dirt.”

“No one’s prolly fished that spot since we were there last year.”

“You can have the views, or you can have the bars, but you gotta consider the cell tower if you’re building a place.”

“All the pines are gone.”

 “What d’ya mean, gone?”

“I mean gone, mate. Not there.”

Tony died on Memorial Day, the American holiday that falls on the last Monday in May and honors the war dead.

When I get to Flinders Island, I will begin my own memorial days. I am taking something that our culture has stopped freely giving: the right to grieve. To shut out the world and its demands. To remember my love and to feel the immensity of his loss. “Grief is praise,” writes Martín Prechtel in his book “The Smell of Rain on Dust,” “because it is the natural way love honors what it misses.”

I haven’t honored Tony enough, because I have not permitted myself the time and space for a grief deep enough to reflect our love.

This will be, finally, the time when I will not have to prepare a face for the faces that I meet. The place where I will not have to pretend that things are normal and that I am okay. Because it has been more than three years and, contrary to appearances, I am not at all okay. I have come to realize that my life since Tony’s death has been one endless, exhausting performance. I have cast myself in a role: woman being normal. I’ve moved around in public acting out a series of convincing scenes: PTO mum, conservation commissioner, author on tour. But nothing has been normal. Here, finally, the long-running show goes on hiatus.

I have been trapped in the maytzar, the narrow place of the Hebrew scriptures. In the Psalms, the singer cries out to God from the narrow place and is answered from the “wideness” of God. Our English word “anguish” means the same thing as the Hebrew maytzar. It is from the Latin for narrowness, strait, restriction. I have not allowed myself the wild wideness of an elaborate, florid, demonstrative grief. Instead, it has been this long feeling of constriction, of holding it in and tamping it down and not letting it show.

I am not a deist. No god will answer my cries. The wideness I seek is in nature, in quiet, in time.

And I have chosen this place, this island, deliberately. Before I met Tony, my life had begun directing me here. Falling in love with him derailed that life, set me on an entirely different course. Now I might glimpse what I have been missing, walk that untraveled road, consider the person I might have become.

Alone on this island at the ends of the earth, maybe, I will finally be able to break out of the maytzar. But first I will need to get back to that moment in my sunlit study when I refused to allow myself to howl.

That howl has become the beast in the basement of my heart. I need to find a way to set it free.

Copyright © 2025 by Geraldine Brooks.

When asked in 2010 to lead what would become the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, Tarun Khanna, the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School, proposed two guiding rules. One: He wanted the organization to be open to all fields of inquiry. And two: He wanted “feet on the street” across South Asia.

This week’s climate adaptation conference, “India 2047: Building a Climate-Resilient Future,” co-hosted by the Mittal Institute and the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability alongside the Indian government, is a sign of Khanna’s push for a strong, multidisciplinary connection between the University and the region, as more than 160 scholars and experts from Harvard and across the world gather to address adaptation to climate change in India.  

The conference is part of the institute’s ongoing climate change initiative focused on South Asia. Since 2023, when the Mittal Institute led its first climate-related workshop in New Delhi, it has been investing in more climate-change adaptation research. Among other projects, its Community Heat Adaptation and Treatment Strategies project, funded initially by the Salata Institute, has studied the health effects of extreme heat on workers using sensors that the subjects wear throughout the day. The study will create one of the largest data sets relating to heat and health anywhere in the world.

The leaders of that research — epidemiologist Caroline Buckee and associate professor in emergency medicine Satchit Balsari — will attend the India conference and participate in workshops over several days in New Delhi, as well as a multiday “climate immersion experience” for senior faculty and analysts in Ahmedabad, the site of some of the Mittal Institute’s initial measurement work on heat stress. Among other topics, the group will address links between extreme heat and poverty, food security, rural incomes, and environmental degradation.

This multipronged approach — with collaborators from Harvard and with the Indian government’s Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change and its public policy think tank NITI Aayog — is typical of the Mittal Institute’s appetite for diverse collaborators and areas of research.

Among many projects in recent years, the institute has facilitated joint bioscience and biotechnology research between Boston and Bangalore through its Building Bharat-Boston Biosciences program; supported studies analyzing pigments in historical Indian art; and brought together researchers from the U.S., England, Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan to study the consequences of the 1947 partition of British India. From the beginning, Khanna said, the institute has tried to equally support intellectual endeavors across the sciences, social sciences, and humanities.

It has also stayed true to Khanna’s desire for “feet on the street.” The institute has built up a physical presence across South Asia, with offices in New Delhi and Lahore and representation in other countries — each of which raises project money from the countries in which they’re located. “For us to be operating with any degree of credibility, any degree of welcome in a foreign country, people better start thinking of you as embracing their societies as opposed to being an outsider,” said Khanna.

The relationships will be on display at the conference, where Harvard faculty such as Sturgis Hooper Professor of Geology Daniel Schrag, Vice Provost for Climate and Sustainability James Stock, and Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences Peter Huybers will work with colleagues across Harvard’s Schools of business, medicine, and public health and with several agencies of the Indian government. “We have enormous goodwill,” Khanna said. “Especially at a time when higher ed is treated with skepticism, it’s a pristine asset.”

As the event unfolds, one of the largest organized by Harvard outside of the U.S., Khanna believes it’s just the beginning for the Mittal Institute — with many years of collaboration and innovation to come.

U.S. markets this month suffered heavy losses after China, Mexico, and Canada responded to President Donald Trump’s tariff push by imposing levies on American goods. Many investors fear a prolonged trade war could push the nation into a recession. (The president says that Americans should expect a “period of transition.”) Meanwhile, the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index has fallen to its lowest level since November 2022.

These developments serve as a backdrop for meetings this week where the Federal Reserve will weigh whether to resume interest rate cuts.

In this edited conversation, economist Jeffrey Frankel, James W. Harpel Professor of Capital Formation and Growth at Harvard Kennedy School, discusses the impact of the new administration’s tariff policy and the broader condition of the U.S. economy.

Is there a good argument for increasing or expanding tariffs?

They’re pretty universally bad — almost all economists are opposed to them. Can there ever be a good justification for a tariff? Three cases I can think of. First, a poor country may have no effective way of collecting revenue other than a tariff. Second, there’s a so-called “infant industry” argument — that if government is able to identify an industry that has potential for economies of scale and spillover effects, they need to protect it against international competition for a few years and then the industry will grow, and the government will be able to remove the tariffs and have it compete on world markets. Third, the Europeans have something called CBAM, Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, in the cause of fighting climate change. One might interpret that as a tariff, but my interpretation is that because it helps carry out the Paris Accord, it may be beneficial and indeed is the sort of measure that is fine under the World Trade Organization. There are probably other examples, but none that apply to the U.S. today.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called the market selloff a “normal” and “healthy correction” to years of overreliance on government spending, predicting that we’ll end up with a stronger economy. Is that a plausible explanation?

It’s not based on anything. Their way of coping is to stall for time, saying, “Well, of course, we’re going to have some negative effects at first, but this prosperity will come after.” But that’s not based on any kind of economic argument that I have heard, let alone a valid one.

I suppose someone could argue that with tariff protection, our manufacturing sector will achieve higher investment and higher productivity growth, and we’ll be more competitive in the long run, and that higher growth will show up in higher incomes. But the Trump approach to tariffs is hurting investment, not helping it. Usually what they say is that boosts confidence, but the current policy chaos is having the opposite effect. It’s reducing confidence.

For countries undergoing debt crises, mainly developing countries, a common pattern is that they’ve been running budget deficits that are too large, and their debt level is getting too high. Then, as part of an adjustment program, usually under the guidance of the IMF [International Monetary Fund], they have to undergo a combination of reducing the budget deficit, monetary discipline, and devaluation. That causes a year or two of severe economic pain but allows a recovery subsequently and a restoration of growth in the long-term. You could characterize Korea in ’98 that way, for example. The excessive debt part of the pattern does describe the U.S. now, but I don’t think the rest applies to the U.S. A debt crisis is not to be recommended and is not what the tariff proponents have in mind.

The latest University of Michigan consumer sentiment index shows economic confidence is at its lowest since November 2022. Also, hiring has cooled. Do these developments point to a recession or something like 1970s-style stagflation?

I think it is appropriate to worry about a recession coming within the next year. It’s much more likely than one would have thought a year ago.

I see five things going on that could logically lead to or worsen a recession. One is the trade war. The second is a stock market crash. The third is major cuts in government spending, assuming Musk and Trump manage to find genuine cuts. The fourth is a U.S. fiscal crisis because of a government shutdown, failure to raise the debt ceiling, or a downgrading by Moody’s, the credit rating agency. The fifth is a general increase in perceptions of risk. Risk is increasing because what Trump has done on tariffs and on government spending has been so erratic. It’s almost as if they’re doing everything they can to increase perceptions of variability and volatility and unpredictability. The uncertainty itself has a negative effect.

The instability has alarmed not just investors, but also sectors like real estate and health care, with many businesses shifting into “wait and see” mode. What are the implications for the wider economy?

If the uncertainty only lasted a minute, it wouldn’t have much effect, but it’s clearly going to last longer than that. Even if it takes a few months to resolve these issues, that could be enough to hurt employment and income and even to cause a recession. In the extreme, if all hiring stops for a month or two, that itself would cause a recession.

The Federal Reserve faces two seemingly contradictory options on interest rates: support the economy and jobs with rate cuts or leave them alone to keep inflation and inflation expectations under control. What’s the Fed likely do?

That’s the tradeoff. In a sense, it’s always the tradeoff, but it becomes much more acute at a time like this, because tariffs and general chaos are adverse supply shocks. They’re like a world oil shock or a COVID shock or something like that. Supply shocks make a tradeoff between output and inflation worse, and they’re not something the central bank can make up for. So, the Fed is worried both about increasing inflation and about a slowdown in the economy. One objective says keep interest rates higher, and the other says cut them. I think they will leave them unchanged.

When someone asks Damion Searls how he “chooses” words for a translation, he likens it to asking a reader how they “choose” what Mr. Darcy looks like when reading “Pride and Prejudice.” Neither is so much a choice, he says, but a response shaped by the text.

“We’re not translating the words that are there. We’re having a reading experience, and then we’re giving a version of that that someone who reads English can then have,” Searls ’92 told the audience that recently packed the Barker Center’s Plimpton Room to hear the acclaimed translator. “This is why there are no perfect translations or ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ translations, just like there’s no wrong way that Mr. Darcy looks.”

Searls, who works from German, Norwegian, French, and Dutch, has translated Nobel Prize winner Jon Fosse, Proust, Rilke, Nietzsche, Thomas Mann, and Max Weber. He discussed his philosophy, which he outlines in his 2024 book, at a lecture co-hosted by the Department of Comparative Literature, the Department of Philosophy, and the Mahindra Humanities Center’s Rethinking Translation Seminar.

The day before, Searls led a translation workshop with three Ph.D. students from the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in Comparative Literature’s Secondary Field in Translation Studies.

“Whatever you think translating is, it’s some kind of reading and some kind of writing joined together,” the former Adams and Dunster House resident said. “Reading explains a lot about translation, and if you unpack what reading is you’re going to get most of the way to the philosophy of translation.”

Searls said translation isn’t that different from other forms of writing in English, which require the same skills. However what distinguishes translation is the way translators read, a close reading that engages deeply with a language’s structure.

When “reading like a translator,” Searls said he must identify which linguistic elements can be omitted in English and which are intentional stylistic choices by the author. When translating Uwe Johnson’s “Anniversaries,” for example, he noticed frequent “not this but that” constructions (“the train leaves at not 7:00 but 6:00”), which are more common in German than in English.

While it would be easy to rephrase for smoother English, he realized Johnson used this pattern deliberately to express a personal vision and “slowly hone in on the truth.”

“We can’t just erase it because it’s not just the German language: It’s him, the author,” Searls said. “Every writer is using the resources of their language to do what they want to do, and as translators we have to do the same thing with an entirely different body of resources.”

In “The Philosophy of Translation,” Searls draws from French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s ideas about perception to describe how translating happens, arguing the “living bond” that exists between people and objects also exists between translators and the language they are reading.

Just as a person immediately recognizes a chair, understands its purpose, and is prompted to sit by the object’s existence, Searls told the audience, translators also immediately recognize written language when they read it, understand one of its purposes is to be translated, and are prompted by the language to produce the translation.

Searls also described his process when approaching a new translation, which is usually to do a slow and precise first draft, which allows him to revise later versions without referring too much to the source material. He’ll sometimes read the book beforehand, but more frequently translates as he goes.

“It feels intuitive. I just keep revising it and trying to make it sound good,” Searls explained. “As much as you can avoid looking back at the original will help you direct your attention to: Does this sound like it should sound in English?”

One key to a smooth translation is keeping associations similar for readers in both languages, Searls said. While translating Fosse’s “Septology I-VII,” he encountered a reference to Gula Tidend (literally “Gula Times,”) a now-defunct newspaper published in a small town outside the city where the main character lives.

When Searls asked Fosse about the name, he learned that “gula” is an old verb meaning strong wind, and also referred to a medieval Norwegian region, the birthplace of the oldest body of laws in the Nordic countries. Fosse left the choice up to him, so Searls settled on “The Northern Herald,” which evokes medieval heraldry and the northern wind.

Most importantly, he said, his translation avoids disrupting the sentence’s flow by making English readers pause to wonder about the words in the title.

“It seems like this example of the translator being really subjective, but from my point of view, I was just reading,” Searls said. “At first, when I read Gula Tidend I didn’t know how to read it. I didn’t understand what it was doing in the book, why it was there, how it fit together. Then I looked up the words, talked to the author, and got to the point where I could read it. Once I got there, I was totally faithful.”

An audience member asked Searls how to reach the point of feeling like a skilled enough reader to translate. He responded that while some believe mastering the source language is necessary for translation, he sees more nuance. Though he knows Norwegian well enough to translate Fosse, he said, he wouldn’t necessarily feel comfortable translating just any Norwegian book.

“It’s also true that there are different kinds of expertise in the world. You don’t want to err so far in that direction that you become a sort of gatekeeper, saying that until you have a Ph.D. you’re not allowed to translate a book, because maybe you bring other things to the table,” Searls said. “It seems like a very good example of do your best and try to get better.”

Frank Hu is the Chair of the Department of Nutrition and the Fredrick J. Stare Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

This is a heavily debated topic. Alcohol, nicotine, and opiates are all classified as addictive substances based on strict clinical criteria, and although sugar has been shown to increase cravings and compulsive eating behaviors, technically it’s not classified as an addictive substance based on current clinical criteria.

But the physical and psychological effects are real. Our food system is loaded with ultra-processed foods that contain not just added sugar but unhealthy fats and sodium. Those kinds of foods increase your cravings, because they’re very palatable, and they’re accessible. That leads to habitual consumption, and when you suddenly stop consuming those foods, you do experience some withdrawal-like symptoms: headaches, dizziness, anxiety, and so on. But it’s a matter of the degree: For alcohol, nicotine, and drugs, those symptoms are very severe, and it’s very difficult for people to completely stop consuming those substances.

So we can say that sugar has some addictive qualities, but it’s not officially classified as an addictive substance like alcohol, nicotine, or drugs.

It’s also important to make a distinction between a food or nutrient that we need to survive versus a drug or substance which can be completely removed from our diet. You can eliminate alcohol or drugs, but sugar is in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, milk, and other dairy products. If you consume low to moderate amounts of sugar, it’s not going to have major health consequences or psychological effects. The most important issue is the dose.

In the U.S. currently, the average person consumes almost 20 teaspoons a day of added sugar in things like sugary beverages, snacks, and sweets, which is enormous — it’s almost 300 calories. The recommendation from the American Heart Association is no more than 9 teaspoons of added sugar for men, 6 teaspoons for women, and much less for children.

People should be aware of the amount of sugar they’re consuming. Read the food labels for your cookies and snacks. Going cold turkey can backfire, so reduce your amount of added sugar gradually.

It’s difficult to classify sugar the same way as truly addictive substances. An appropriate amount of sugar in our diet can enhance flavor and texture; it can increase pleasure. We need some sweetness in our diets and in our lives. So if you classify sugar the same way as nicotine, it may be counterproductive.

— As told to Sy Boles/Harvard Staff Writer

Homer’s “Odyssey” has captured people’s imaginations for nearly 3,000 years. Testaments to its enduring appeal abound: A recent stage adaptation of the epic poem at the American Repertory Theater; a movie by Oscar-winning director Christopher Nolan is in the works; and a new translation by Bard scholar Daniel Mendelsohn will be published next month.

In this edited interview, Greg Nagy, Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature, reveals his favorite of the more than 100 translations of the poem, explains the appeal of the “trickster” Odysseus, and more.

What can you tell us about Homer?

There is nothing historical about the person called Homer. However, there’s everything historical about how people who listened to Homeric poetry imagined the poet. Homeric poetry evolved especially in two phases. The earlier phase was in coastal Asia Minor, in territory that now belongs to the modern state of Turkey and in outlying islands that now belong to the modern state of Greece. In these areas, around the late eighth and early seventh centuries B.C.E., there was a confederation of 12 Greek Ionian cities, which is where “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” evolved into the general shape that we have. A second phase took place in preclassical and classical Athens, around the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.E. Before such a later phase, almost anything that was epic could be attributed to this mythologized figure called Homer.

There have been more than 100 translations of the poem. Do you have a favorite?

I like the translation by George Chapman, a poet in his own right, who published the first complete translation of “The Odyssey” into English in 1616. There is that famous poem by John Keats (1816), in which he speaks about reading Chapman’s Homer. I also like the translation by Emily Wilson, who was the first female translator of “The Odyssey” (2017) into English.

I also like the translations by Richmond Lattimore and Robert Fitzgerald, both of whom were dear friends. Lattimore was probably one of the most accurate translators of Homeric poetry; he cared about the original Greek text as it was eventually transmitted. He is easy on the eye, but hard on the ear. Fitzgerald is easier on the ear. And then there is Robert Fagles (1996), who has done the most actor-friendly translation.

I like Wilson’s translation very much. She is a great poet; she has a real ear for what’s going on in the minds and hearts of the characters. One of my favorite parts is how Wilson handles the gruesome death of the handmaidens who are not loyal to the household of Odysseus, and their agonizing death is so beautifully treated without any false sympathy.

Novelist Samuel Butler, who was a real romantic of the Victorian sort, wrote the book “The Authoress of ‘The Odyssey,’” where he imagines that the poem is composed not by Homer, but by Homer’s daughter. For her masterful translation, I would say that Wilson could be considered as the daughter of Homer.

Why do we find Odysseus fascinating? He’s cunning, vengeful, and so flawed …

I learned when I was a graduate student at Harvard from my professor, John H. Finley, that Odysseus, whom we all see as an epic hero, gets “a bad press” almost everywhere except in “The Odyssey.” Odysseus is what anthropologists call a trickster — a hero who is not originally an epic hero, but someone who, by way of knowing all the norms of society, can violate every rule, whether it’s a deeply ingrained moral law or whether it’s a matter of etiquette, as in the case of table manners. The value of the trickster is that it teaches us what the rules are because the trickster will show you how every one of them can be violated.

What we read in the very first line of “The Odyssey” summarizes it: “The man, sing him to me, O Muse, that man of twists and turns …” What can be more fascinating than somebody who has unlimited capacity to shift identities?

Who is your favorite character? Odysseus? Penelope? Telemachus?

Penelope is my favorite character in “The Odyssey” because she’s so smart. I have written a commentary interpreting the dream of Penelope that she narrates to her husband, who is still in disguise. If my interpretation is right, then the deftness of her narration shows that she is even smarter than Odysseus!

Finally, what should readers learn from the poem?

In the Homeric “Odyssey,” the hero experiences a journey of the soul. Reading the epic can lead to the reader’s own journey.

At Arrow Street Arts, the Harvard Jazz Orchestra found itself swinging with Grammy-winning saxophonist and composer Ted Nash. The Feb. 21 sold-out concert, which I planned alongside Emil Massad ’25, marked an exciting collaboration with Jazz at Lincoln Center.

The center was eager to collaborate with Harvard because, as Todd Stoll, its vice president of education, noted, “Harvard is such a revered institution worldwide. It is important that people also realize that the arts play a very vital role in the lives of students.”

For this performance, Nash arranged the pieces he played with the orchestra, immersing us in his creativity.

“Ted approached the music with wisdom and attention to detail through the energy and emotion he brought, and the insightful comments, suggestions, and anecdotes he shared,” said saxophonist Zeb Jewell-Alibhai ’27.

After rehearsal, we had dinner with Nash, giving us a chance to connect beyond playing. He talked of growing up in a musical family and always knowing he wanted to be a musician.

“He encouraged us to reflect on our own histories as a way of developing creativity, walking us through how his family and past experiences shaped his music,” making the opportunity to play his arrangements even more meaningful, said Massad.

For Nash, dinner was the highlight. “It was unusual because the students were so bright and open and willing to talk about things that are important to them — that moved me,”  he said.

Nash talked to us about our interests and fears, offering insight and encouragement. He was surprised that most students were not music concentrators, noting, “They had so many other things they wanted to talk about … that actually overlapped with music.”

“Collaborating with Ted Nash was effortless. Ted created an ideal environment with amazing energy, resulting in a successful concert,” said Yosvany Terry, Harvard director of jazz bands and a senior lecturer on music.