Hasty taps Hathaway
The Hasty Pudding Theatricals of Harvard University has chosen actress Anne Hathaway as the 2010 Woman of the Year.Award festivities will be held Jan. 28 at 2:30 p.m. when Hathaway will lead a parade through the streets of Cambridge. Afterward, the president of the theatricals, Clifford Murray ’10, and the vice president of the cast, Derek Mueller ’10, will roast the actress and present her with her Pudding Pot at 3:15 p.m. at the New College Theatre, the Hasty Pudding’s historic home in the heart of Harvard Square since 1889. After the roast, several numbers from the Hasty Pudding Theatrical’s 162nd production, “Commie Dearest,” will be previewed at about 3:40 p.m., followed by a press conference at about 4:10 p.m.The Man of the Year event will take place on Feb. 5. The recipient of this year’s award will be announced next week.For more information about the events, please contact the Hasty Pudding Theatricals’ press manager, D.J. Smolinsky ’11. He can be reached at 516.729.7858 or by e-mail at press@hastypudding.org.The awards are presented annually to performers who have made a “lasting and impressive contribution to the world of entertainment.” Established in 1951, the Woman of the Year award has been granted to many notable entertainers, including Meryl Streep, Katharine Hepburn, Julia Roberts, Jodie Foster, Elizabeth Taylor, and, most recently, Renée Zellweger. The Man of the Year award was established in 1963. Its past recipients include Clint Eastwood, Tom Cruise, Robert De Niro, Steven Spielberg, Harrison Ford, Anthony Hopkins, Bruce Willis, and, last year, James Franco.Continuing to emerge as one of Hollywood’s most engaging talents, Hathaway shot to stardom in films such as “The Devil Wears Prada.” She went on to receive nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for her performance in Jonathan Demme’s recently acclaimed “Rachel Getting Married,” for which she was named best actress by the National Board of Review.Hathaway has impressed audiences with her range as an actress, from her lauded dramatic performances in “Becoming Jane,” “Passengers,” and “Brokeback Mountain,” to her comedic turns in such films as “Get Smart,” “The Princess Diaries,” and “Ella Enchanted.” Hathaway also took to the New York stage last summer in Shakespeare in the Park’s production of “Twelfth Night,” playing Viola.Hathaway will next star in the ensemble romantic comedy “Valentine’s Day,” to be released in February, and as the White Queen alongside Johnny Depp in Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland,” hitting theaters in March.Director Garry Marshall has said of her, “The multi-talented Hathaway is a combination of Julia Roberts, Audrey Hepburn, and Judy Garland.”To purchase tickets to “Commie Dearest,” contact the New College box office at 617.495.5205. The show opens Feb. 5 at the Man of the Year ceremony and continues in Cambridge until March 7. Performances are each Wednesday through Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4 and 8 p.m., and Sunday matinees at 3 p.m. The company then will travel to New York to perform at Hunter College’s Kaye Playhouse on March 12 and 13 at 8 p.m. The tour continues to the Hamilton City Hall in Bermuda for performances on March 18 to 20 at 8 p.m.
We usually think of commencement as college’s end, but the word actually means the beginning, since everyday life is what follows. In this video, seven renowned Harvard instructors give their takeaway advice on how to thrive in the wider world, how to chart a fulfilling future, and how to give back along the way.
Harvard physicists have achieved the first quantum entanglement of photons and solid-state materials. Their achievement marks a key advance toward practical quantum networks, as the first experimental demonstration of a means by which quantum bits, or “qubits,” can communicate with one another over great distances.A team led by physicist Mikhail D. Lukin reported the findings in the latest edition of the journal Nature.“In quantum computing and quantum communication, a big question has been whether or how it would be possible to actually connect qubits, separated by long distances, to one another,” said Lukin, a professor of physics at Harvard. “As the first demonstration of quantum entanglement between a solid-state material and photons, our work is an important advance toward linking qubits together into a quantum network.”Quantum networking applications such as long-distance communication and distributed computing (in which computers interact through a network) would require the nodes that process and store quantum data in qubits to be connected to one another by entanglement: a state where two atoms become indelibly linked so that one inherits the properties of the other. This state has previously been demonstrated only with photons and individual ions or atoms.“Our work takes this one step further, showing how one can engineer and control the interaction between individual photons and matter in a solid-state material,” said first author Emre Togan, a Harvard graduate student in physics. “What’s more, we show that the photons can be imprinted with the information stored in a qubit.”Quantum entanglement, famously termed “spooky action at a distance” by a skeptical Albert Einstein, is a fundamental property of quantum mechanics. It allows distribution of quantum information over tens of thousands of kilometers, limited only by how fast and how far members of the entangled pair can propagate in space.The new result builds on earlier work by Lukin’s group, using single-atom impurities in diamonds as qubits. Lukin and colleagues have previously shown that these impurities can be controlled by focusing laser light on a diamond lattice flaw, where nitrogen replaces an atom of carbon. That work showed that the so-called “spin degrees of freedom” of these impurities make excellent quantum memory.Lukin and his co-authors now say that these impurities are also remarkable because, when excited with a sequence of finely tuned microwave and laser pulses, they can emit photons one at a time, so that photons are entangled with quantum memory. Such a stream of photons can be used for secure transmission of information.Lukin and Togan’s co-authors on the Nature paper are Yiwen Chu, Alexei Trifonov, Jeronimo Maze, and Alexander S. Zibrov, all at Harvard; Liang Jiang of Harvard and the California Institute of Technology; Lilian I. Childress of Harvard and Bates College; M.V. Gurudev Dutt of Harvard and the University of Pittsburgh; A.S. Sorensen at the University of Copenhagen; and Philip R. Hemmer of Texas A&M University. The work was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Harvard-MIT Center for Ultracold Atoms, the National Science Foundation, the National Defense Science & Engineering Graduate Fellowship, and the Packard Foundation.
Atul Gawande, associate professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at HSPH, spoke with Tom Ashbrook of NPR’s “On Point” about health care and health reform on Jan. 4, 2011. Republicans in the House of Representatives are bringing forward a vote to repeal the reform law, which was passed last March, but Gawande says that “repeal would be a return to stalemate.” Without the new law, he said, by 2019 health insurance will cost “roughly double” what it does now for a family policy and that the federal debt will continue to balloon.Gawande also appeared on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report” Jan. 5 to discuss his book, “The Checklist Manifesto,” which has just been released in paperback.
A native of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Dr. J. Richard (“Dick”) Gaintner received his undergraduate education at Lehigh University and his M.D. degree four years later in 1962 from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Following residency in medicine at the University Hospitals of Cleveland, he served as Captain in the US Army Medical Corps, first at the Army Hospital in Fort Carson, Colorado, and then as Assistant Chief of Staff at the 85th Evacuation Hospital in Qui Nhon, receiving in 1966 the Army Commendation Medal for “Meritorious Service in the Republic of Vietnam.”He returned to Hopkins for a year as Fellow in Hematology and then, in 1967, joined the first faculty of the newly-established University of Connecticut School of Medicine. In 1975, he became Vice President for Medical Affairs at New Britain General Hospital. This experience, combining the context of medical practice, its teaching and administration, led to his appointment in 1977 as Associate Dean for Administration at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and subsequently as Vice President and Deputy Director of Johns Hopkins Hospital.In 1983, Dr. Gaintner moved to Albany Medical Center as President and CEO, and six years later to New England Deaconess Hospital in Boston as its President and CEO, joining the faculty of Harvard Medical School where he rose to Professor of Medicine. Shortly after assuming these responsibilities, while reviewing the history of the New England Deaconess Hospital, Dr. Gaintner came upon a statement by Mary E. Lunn, who was the Superintendent at the founding of the institution in 1896, wherein she envisioned the hospital as a place where “science and kindliness unite in combating disease”. Her comment resonated with Dr. Gaintner such that he adopted it as the institution’s mission statement and used it as a guiding principle for the development of the New England Deaconess Hospital under his leadership.During his seven year tenure as President and CEO of the New England Deaconess Hospital (NEDH) he quickly restored the hospital to fiscal stability while providing the underpinning for a remarkable growth in the clinical and academic programs. Under his leadership the new Clinical Center was conceived, financed and built, giving the NEDH one of the finest inpatient clinical facilities in Boston. With subsequent events, this facility became a major component of the merger with the Beth Israel Hospital (BI). During his tenure he brought together with Deaconess a variety of neighboring hospitals to form Pathway Health Network, to include New England Baptist Hospital, Nashoba Hospital in Ayer, Deaconess-Glover in Needham, and Deaconess-Waltham Hospital.In the early 1990’s it became clear that despite formation of the Pathway Health Network, the Deaconess needed a major partner to continue to grow. His vision and statesmanship played a major role in the merger of the NEDH and BI to form the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, which has subsequently been proven to be one of the most successful true mergers of major academic medical centers in the country.With the 1996 merger of Deaconess and Beth Israel Hospitals, and the inclusion of Cambridge’s Mount Auburn Hospital to the Pathway group, the CareGroup HealthCare System was formed, with Dr. Gaintner becoming President, then the second largest hospital network in New England. A year later, he was recruited as CEO of Shands Healthcare in Gainesville, Florida, bringing more than a modicum of order and forward thrust to a relatively young network that initially confronted him with what was characterized by The Free Library as “…the usual complement of internal divisions and conflicts, reflecting an underlying uncertainty about mission, frustration over the lack of alignment among the system’s components, and the natural tendency to try to fix blame rather than confront the fundamental changes underway in health care.” This report goes on to characterize the basis of his success at Shands: “Gaintner’s mild-mannered complexity reflects both developmentally acquired attributes – blue collar upbringing, undergraduate philosophy major, physician, businessman, insatiable reader – as well as core personality characteristics – inevitable optimist, empathetic listener, pragmatist and conciliator. This constellation of attributes underlies clinical and managerial intuition that blends into an artful style…. Gaintner’s approach is characterized by consistent, straightforward messages. His skill is honing in on values and the critical issues upon which complex decisions pivot. He continually returns to the fundamentals, believes in collaboration, meets with everybody (even competitors) and keeps the lines of communication open. He believes that discussion can illuminate common ground, even in the most complicated and contentious relationships.”After four years at Shands, Dr. Gaintner retired, only to be called to Georgetown University as Interim Executive Vice President for Health Services, but was shortly obliged by illness to return home to Gainesville. A beloved second home for many years was in Duxbury, Massachusetts where he maintained a long-standing interest in nearby Plymouth’s Jordan Hospital. In 2001 he was invited to join the Jordan Health Systems Board.Widely recognized as an outstanding member of American academic medicine, Dr. Gaintner had been a member of the Executive Board of the Association of American Medical Colleges and Chair of its Council of Teaching Hospitals, Board member of the American Hospital Association and of the American College of Physician Executives.Dick Gaintner died of pancreatic cancer on May 25, 2004. He was survived by his wife, Suzanne Butler Gaintner, three daughters, Wendy Holcomb of Tacoma, Washington, Sally G. Hess of Phoenix, Arizona, and Jenny Gaintner of Freeland, Maryland, and seven grandchildren.On May 19, 2004, Dr. J. Richard Gaintner was inducted into the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars, a fitting honor bestowed upon highly selected former Hopkins faculty members who have gained marked distinction in their respective fields.Respectfully submitted,Mitchell T. Rabkin, M.D.Robert C. Moellering, Jr., M.D.Adolf W. Karchmer, M.D., Chair
Dear Colleagues,As many of you know, William A. Graham announced his intention to step down as dean of the Harvard Divinity School (HDS) at the end of this academic year, following a decade of leadership. As we begin the search for the next dean, I write to describe the search process and invite your thoughts and engagement.Dean Graham has been a dedicated leader of the Divinity School, helping to build on its important legacy within Harvard while also guiding the significant expansion of its work across religious and cultural divides. I am deeply grateful for his long and varied service to the University — as a scholar, teacher, and dean — and I am pleased that he will remain an active faculty member in the years ahead.I plan to commence the search immediately, with the goal of identifying a new dean to begin service in the next academic year. To that end, I welcome your thoughts on key opportunities and challenges facing the School, the qualities we should seek in the next dean, and specific individuals whom we should consider. Please submit in confidence any comments, suggestions, or other thoughts you may have to divinitysearch@harvard.edu.To assist in the search process, I have asked the following faculty members from the Divinity School and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) with expertise in relevant fields to serve on a faculty search advisory committee:Davíd Carrasco, HDS and FAS: Neil L. Rudenstine Professor of the Study of Latin America, with a joint appointment with the Department of Anthropology in FASDiana Eck, HDS and FAS: Professor of comparative religion and Indian studies and Fredric Wertham Professor of Law and Psychiatry in Society in FASJanet Gyatso, HDS: Hershey Professor of Buddhist StudiesDavid Hempton, HDS: Alonzo L. McDonald Family Professor of Evangelical Theological StudiesEvelyn Higginbotham, FAS: Victor S. Thomas Professor of History, professor of African and African American studies, chair of the Department of African and African American StudiesAmy Hollywood, HDS: Elizabeth H. Monrad Professor of Christian StudiesKaren L. King, HDS: Hollis Professor of DivinityJames Kloppenberg, FAS: Charles Warren Professor of American HistoryDavid C. Lamberth, HDS: Professor of philosophy and theologyPeter Machinist, HDS and FAS: Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental LanguagesLaura S. Nasrallah, HDS: Professor of New Testament and Early ChristianityStephanie Paulsell, HDS: Houghton Professor of the Practice of Ministry StudiesMalika Zeghal, FAS: Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor in Contemporary Islamic Thought and LifeThe advisory committee will meet through the academic year until the conclusion of the search, and I thank the members for devoting their time to the important task at hand.I would also like to thank members of the Divinity School community, with whom I met last week, for sharing their thoughts with me about this important moment for the study of religion at Harvard. I look forward to receiving input from them and the larger Harvard community throughout the search process.Sincerely,Drew Faust
When Lucas Scanlon, MC/MPA 2012 candidate, arrived at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) this fall, he didn’t expect to find many sympathizers. A Tea Party activist from Texas, Scanlon anticipated staunch opposition to many of his political ideals, only to learn that many of his fellow students were open to learning more about the party and what it stands for.“My classmates are here because they believe in something. They are American citizens fighting for what they believe in. I listen to them, and they listen to me,” Scanlon says. “Sometimes we agree, but we are always respectful of each other. With that respect, we find the common ground to really listen and understand. At that point, even if we still disagree, we understand why.”In an effort to further serious political conversations on campus, Scanlon has founded a Tea Party caucus at the Kennedy School, inviting students of all persuasions to attend and participate.“Harvard should be able to have the deeper conversation,” Scanlon says. “My hope is that I can help people find a way to be true to their own convictions and yet still find a way to listen and understand so that we have a chance of working together.”While Scanlon aspires to incite a conversation about fiscal responsibility, his classmate Ben Beachy, MPP 2012 candidate, seeks to fast forward the policy debate about economic inequality. Beachy is one of hundreds of people taking part in the Occupy Boston protests in Dewey Square.“Movements such as this one have historically shaped U.S. politics by carving out sufficient space in the public debate for policy changes to advance,” Beachy says.
When the “next big thing” is invented in a dorm room, ruminated over in a late-night café, or discovered in a laboratory, it will now find more support in the Cambridge area, giving its inventors a better reason to stay connected.Today, the Experiment Fund, a new seed-stage investment fund, opens its doors with backing from storied venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates (NEA). Designed specifically to support student start-ups and nurture novel technologies and platforms created in Cambridge (or by innovators educated in Cambridge), the Experiment Fund will eventually include additional strategic angel investors and advisers.“We are very excited about the Experiment Fund; we believe it will provide a much-needed set of people, skills, and financial resources to spur the innovation and idea creation of our students,” says Cherry A. Murray, dean of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).Murray, who helped to realize the fund, will designate SEAS faculty members to advise student entrepreneurs about the Experiment Fund and other available opportunities and resources, such as the new Harvard Innovation Lab (i-lab).The idea to provide an intensely local company-building resource to young innovators originally grew out of close collaboration between venture capitalist Patrick Chung, academic and entrepreneur David Edwards, and scholar-turned-entrepreneur Hugo Van Vuuren.“Cambridge has always seeded and cultivated brilliant minds and entrepreneurs, and now they’ll have another reason to stay rooted in and draw strength from these fertile soils,” says Chung, who is co-head of NEA’s consumer and seed-stage investing practices.Chung received his A.B. degree in environmental science from Harvard College and a joint J.D.-M.B.A. degree from Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School.“Students will have an obvious place to go once they breach the boundary of the classroom,” adds Edwards, Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Biomedical Engineering at SEAS and founder of Le Laboratoire in Paris.“We are very excited to work with everyone on campus to infuse the fund with our global platform and entrepreneur-first tradition,” says Harry Weller, general partner at NEA and graduate of Harvard Business School.Van Vuuren, a 2007 graduate of Harvard College, student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, adds, “The fund is looking for smart and resourceful people, zealous full-time teams, and experiments in need of seed funding and hands-on help to get off the ground.”Designed to attract engineers, entrepreneurs, and designers and to empower them to test and build bold ideas, the Experiment Fund will explore three core areas: Information, health care, and energy technologies.Chung, who serves as an expert-in-residence at SEAS, expects the fund to support several promising companies in the coming two years. Each new venture will receive up to $250,000 over that same period.While the fund expects to cultivate student innovation initially at Harvard, it will function completely independently of the University and will invest broadly on the East Coast.
Toni Morrison’s complex style can prove challenging to some readers, but the celebrated writer makes no apologies for her prose. When media mogul Oprah Winfrey once remarked that she didn’t understand the author’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1987 novel “Beloved,” Morrison simply replied, “Read it again,” recounted Davíd Carrasco, Harvard’s Neil L. Rudenstine Professor of the Study of Latin America.Happily, the Harvard Divinity School (HDS) community will receive some welcome help exploring Morrison’s work in the coming weeks. Carrasco, who acknowledged that “those of us who have spent time reading Morrison know how tough it is,” offered the Oprah anecdote last week during the first in a series of talks aimed at helping the HDS community delve into the religious dimensions of Morrison’s writing.The working group, led by Carrasco and Stephanie Paulsell, Houghton Professor of the Practice of Ministry Studies, will convene on Fridays in the lead-up to the author’s Ingersoll Lecture on Immortality on Dec. 6 in Sanders Theatre.During the discussion in Andover Hall’s Sperry Room, Carrasco described how he and Morrison, a longtime friend, had identified over several conversations three distinct ways that she portrays the sacred in her work: through traditional Christian rituals, sermons, and symbols; through African-influenced themes and characters; and through what Morrison called “just strange stuff.”But a richer understanding of the religious themes and questions in her writing, said Carrasco, requires a deeper and more nuanced investigation. “We need multiple views, different disciplines, unusual takes, and conversations so that we can move forward in our understanding,” he said.Those conversations will take shape during the next three months in collaboration with scholars from HDS and across the University, including historian Walter Johnson, Winthrop Professor of History and professor of African and African-American studies, whose most recent book is “Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market,” and Jonathan L. Walton, the new Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church and Plummer Professor of Christian Morals. They will explore Morrison’s 1992 essay collection “Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination.”Morrison’s interest in storytelling began in her youth, Carrasco said. As a child, the Ohio native and avid reader grew up on ghost stories. She eventually studied English at Howard University. She attended Cornell University, where she earned a master of arts degree in English in 1955, and wrote a thesis on the theme of suicide in the writings of Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner. Eventually, she turned to a career in publishing. It was in publishing, the author said at Radcliffe Yard in 2007, that “I finally followed the books to writing them.”Themes of cultural identity, freedom, and loss figure prominently in her writing. Among her best-known works are her novels “The Bluest Eye,” about a young African-American girl’s desire for white skin and blue eyes; “Sula,” a tale of friendship and betrayal; and “Beloved,” based on the story of an African-American slave who briefly escaped to freedom in Ohio. Morrison won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1993. In May, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.As part of his opening talk, Carrasco examined the religious dimensions to Morrison’s 1977 novel “Song of Solomon,” about an African-American man who sets out on a quest to discover the truth about his family history and the story of a relative who escaped slavery by flying back to Africa.In the book, said Carrasco, Morrison develops the notion of “the importance and power of magical flight as a way to help the characters deal with “profound racial suffering.”“In my view,” added Carrasco, “Morrison has partially hidden in her narrative thread of magical flight the key religious theme of finding a spiritual ally who enables the seeker to transcend the terror of one’s historical condition.”
Driven by historic levels of financial aid, the number of applications to Harvard College remained high this year. Applications reached a record 35,022, the third consecutive year with numbers near 35,000. Last year 34,303 applied, and two years ago 34,950 did.“Financial aid continues to be a major factor in students’ decisions to apply to Harvard,” said William R. Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions and financial aid. “Students and their families have many questions about the affordability of college in challenging financial times. They are reassured when they learn how our financial aid program makes it possible for students from modest and middle-income families to come to Harvard.“Generations of alumni have established a partnership with present and future undergraduates,” said Fitzsimmons. “Students, as always, contribute to the cost of their own education through term-time and summer work — and have the option of loans as well. Alumni generosity enables the College to provide $172 million this year to meet the financial needs of our remarkable undergraduates.”“We are deeply grateful to President Drew Faust, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Michael Smith, and Dean of the College Evelynn Hammonds for their continued leadership in sustaining Harvard’s core value of access for the nation’s and the world’s most promising students,” he said.More than 60 percent of Harvard students receive need-based aid to attend, and on average their families pay only $11,500 annually. “Our financial aid program requires no contribution from the 20 percent of Harvard families with annual incomes below $65,000, and asks an average of no more than 10 percent of income from the majority of families receiving financial aid,” said Sarah C. Donahue, director of financial aid. “In addition, even families with incomes greater than $150,000 are eligible for aid, depending on their particular circumstances, such as having multiple children in college or unusual medical or other essential expenses.“It appears that there is greater economic diversity in the applicant pool this year,” said Donahue. “We see a 37 percent increase in the number of students requesting a fee waiver, an indication of more applicants from low- and modest-income backgrounds.”The demographics of this year’s and last year’s applicant pools are generally similar. “Minority students remain a significant segment of the applicant pool, the gender breakdown is still about 52 percent male, and geographical distribution is about the same, except for a slight decline in the number of applicants from Canada,” said Marlyn E. McGrath, director of admissions.“We note another increase in applications from those interested in mathematics, physical sciences, and engineering — and a 26 percent increase in prospective computer scientists,” said McGrath. “The pattern of increases in these four areas began with the establishment of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and it is clear that SEAS has raised the level of visibility of our superb and expanded offerings in these fields of study.”The admissions committee is now reviewing the applications of those deferred during early action, as well as those who applied for the Jan. 1 regular action program. Applicants will be notified of the committee’s decisions on March 28.Admitted students will be invited to Cambridge for Visitas, the visiting program for prospective freshmen, to be held this year from April 20-22. Students have until May 1 to notify Harvard of their decision to enroll.