Month: April 2018

For every student accepted to Harvard, nineteen others are rejected, making admissions a zero-sum game in which a set of criteria promoting a particular group will directly demote others. One such evaluation factor is legacy admissions: the practice of granting an admissions advantage to relatives of college alumni. A common defense for legacy admissions is … Read more

On April 13, 2018, Harvard University Health Services received a call about a black male Harvard student who was intoxicated and in need of urgent medical care. The student’s intoxication likely occurred during Yardfest, a time when many student party and use illegal substances. About 30 minutes later, officers from the Cambridge Police Department arrived … Read more

For Democrats hoping that the 2018 midterm elections will deliver them a majority in the House of Representatives, the state of California represents a bastion of opportunities: several vulnerable GOP incumbents will face tough reelection fights in the year ahead. But while California is largely considered a haven for liberalism, seven of its 53 seats … Read more

A college library bookshelf.  The Great Works “We absolutely never explicitly talked about race in my English classes. I do remember in my senior year class saying something to my classmates about what it’s like to be the only black person when we’re talking about slavery or racism, but I had a largely joking tone … Read more

This year, data from the Harvard Public Opinion Project shows a trend that may be concerning to many Americans: a general disinterest in both community and military service.   For the 2,631 young people aged 18 to 29 surveyed, difference in participation in community service seems to stem mostly from age. Forty-three percent of those … Read more

Opioid overdose deaths have increased markedly in the United States over the last twenty years. In 2016 alone, 42,249 Americans died due to an opioid overdose, a 425 percent increase since 1999. As such, this epidemic has had a devastating impact of a variety of communities, permeating a diverse cross-section of the American society. The … Read more

We all define ourselves in part by where we are from. I, for example, was born in the winter of 1996 in Detroit, Michigan. But perhaps it’s not so simple. My parents had arrived here—via Minneapolis, Houston, Long Island, and small-town Kentucky—from Karachi, Pakistan, where they entered the world some 30 years before me. Uprooting … Read more