At a board meeting last month, the other organizers of Harvard College Effective Altruism (HCEA) and I were worried in the best possible way: we were planning a talk by philosopher Peter Singer and it had received over 1,500 RVSPs weeks in advance. With great excitement, we booked a second overflow university lecture hall to … Read more
A few nights into Opening Days, freshmen filled a Science Center lecture hall to watch a teaching troupe spark the conversation on sexual assault. An announcement prefaced the show: should the performance’s prickly topics prove at any point too difficult to handle, we were free to seek out one of the peer counselors in the … Read more
Since “safe spaces” became the buzzword for criticism of today’s “infantilised” college students, a discomfiting number of stories has emerged. They range from the troubling—a white afrobeat band removed from a concert line-up and race-segregated screenings of Dear White People in a UK university—to the humorous NY Times description of a Brown University area “equipped … Read more
In a recent New York Times op-ed about the rise of safe spaces on college campuses, Judy Shulevitz writes, “[O]nce you designate some spaces as safe, you imply that the rest are unsafe. It follows that the rest should be made safer.” This then leads to the trend that “students’ needs are anticipated by a … Read more
The story isn’t new: women make up 5 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs, 19 percent of Congress members, and zero percent of U.S. presidents. By an alleged combination of being perceived as bossy, less competent, and too emotional, women have consistently been denied leadership positions in both the public and private sectors. Surprisingly, however, this … Read more
Although education is often proclaimed to be the guarantor of social quality, it all too often can lead to a further divergence between different classes. Before their fourth birthdays, low-income children will have heard on average 30 million fewer words than their wealthier counterparts. The gap only widens throughout the course of the their education. … Read more
“The Great Barrier Reef is an icon under pressure,” warns Australia’s Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. A mecca of beautiful biodiversity and tourism, Australia’s world-renowned Great Barrier Reef has come under the siege of ugly pollutants and politics. Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (GBR), located off the coast of Queensland, nurtures over 2300 kilometers of … Read more
Martha Coakley previously served as at attorney general for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. She is currently a visiting fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University. Harvard Political Review: At the time you became an attorney, law was a male dominated field. What drove you to pursue law and what challenges did you face … Read more
There are students among us who have to balance the dual desire of protecting one’s country and pursuing an education. After serving as a UN Peacekeeper in South Sudan during part of his service to South Korea, Jason Kwon ’14-’16 returned to Harvard as a junior to find that his freshman-year roommates had already graduated. After … Read more
Women and men are not equal. The clearest indication of this is the gender wage gap, which has barely budged in a decade. Women are paid, on average, about 78 percent of what men are paid. But often, gender inequality is less overt than that. Sexism and objectification of the female body is rampant in … Read more