I recently attended an event at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum that featured neuroscientist and atheist intellectual Sam Harris and Quilliam founder Maajid Nawaz, a former Islamic extremist who now works to combat radical Islam. I sat listening to these two share their experiences about working together on their new book Islam and the … Read more
This school can be a scary, oppressive place. It can be lonely and sad and deflating, and especially so if it’s the first time that you’re feeling those things in any significant way. It can wrestle you to the ground and just keep kicking and kicking until it feels like there isn’t anything left, and … Read more
“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president”—Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), October 23, 2010 “Obama turns to McConnell to secure his legacy”—Politico, November 17, 2014 Barack Obama may have made “change” the lynchpin of his 2008 campaign, but few would have anticipated that four years … Read more
We are often reminded—by friends, relatives, and even the media—that the four years of college are the best years of our lives. Perhaps I was naïve at the time, back in the fall of 2010, but I certainly believed in this truism when I started at Harvard. Four years later, after countless sleepless nights, term … Read more
One Tuesday in October, eleven years ago, Lowell House announced its dining hall would be open 24 hours a day. On Wednesday, the space was damaged. The mess was not unexpected, but it was certainly dismaying to administrators and students hoping to create social study space in the heart of a campus home. More than … Read more
The Harvard Campaign publicly launched a little less than two months ago, when the university announced that it would seek to raise $6.5 billion in what is primed to be the largest single fundraising effort in higher education to date. In addition to initiatives focused on financial aid, house renewal, and Harvard’s global impact, the … Read more
Just before this edition of the HPR went to press, the U.S. federal government remained shut down, a victim of allegedly irreconcilable differences between our political parties. The shutdown may be the stuff of history textbooks, but a few weeks earlier, there was another remarkable occurrence, this time a cross-continental op-ed submission. Vladimir Putin, the … Read more
In his hallmark philosophical essay, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” Peter Singer outlines a moral imperative to fight disparity. He argues, “If we can prevent something bad without sacrificing anything of comparable significance, we ought to do it; absolute poverty is bad; there is some poverty we can prevent without sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance; … Read more
The 2012 election, fraught with bitter rhetoric, has finally passed. Yet, for the billions that were spent by the two parties and their respective allies, this campaign was largely devoid of details and vision, leaving major questions unanswered about the country’s future. My fellow Republicans especially must face political reality heading into the 113th Congress. … Read more
The sky over Cambridge is grayer these past few months. It has been a difficult semester for Harvard. We lost two students—one to an accident and the other to suicide. The former was a prodigious and ambitious young scientist set on shaking up the world for the better, the latter a kind and poetic soul … Read more