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
This article is a part of a series written by the Culture staff of the HPR. It is the product of discussion and debate at our weekly meetings, and reflects the opinions of the members present. On March 19, Harvard’s Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science Mike Smith announced his resignation. Smith, who … Read more
The story of the refugee in America has always been one of controversy, of the idyllic “American dream” but also of xenophobia and nativism. People escaping extreme, life-threatening adversity and persecution have been met in America by both welcoming arms and threatening glances. Most recently, President Donald Trump has referred to “Haiti and African nations” … Read more
America’s record rates of income inequality may be to blame for the nation’s largest ongoing public health crisis. According to the Alternate Healthy Eating Index in 2010, a metric that assigns foods values based on their relative nutritional merit, the nutrition gap between the wealthiest Americans and the poorest doubled between 2000 and 2010 alone. While … Read more
2017: The Year of the Far Right 2017 was, in many ways, a year of extremes—while the left celebrated events like the Women’s March and the #MeToo movement, which allowed historically marginalized voices to be heard, members of the far right also gained a new level of influence and attention. With events like the … Read more
Somehow, in the middle of the day, on our way to the Peabody Museum, we got lost. We travelled amidst a sea of indistinguishable red brick buildings, adorned with familiar names (Lowell, Agassiz, Bauer), and nestled in an expanse of endless lawns. We were only a few blocks from the main campus—the occasional map or … Read more
When Barack Obama was first elected in 2008, he was hailed as the nation’s “first black president.” Two years later, as he filled out his census, Obama checked off the “Black, African Am., or Negro” box, confirming his historic label. The catch? Barack Obama is the product of a white mother and a Kenyan father. … Read more
When Facebook began as an online directory for Harvard students in 2004, no one—not even founder Mark Zuckerberg—anticipated its use beyond forging college connections. Facebook, wrote Zuckerberg, was intended to help college students “understand what was going on in their world a little better.” Yet Facebook has since blossomed into a full-fledged social media site, … Read more