KATE FINN ’06: An advocate for victims

Published in the Feb. 8, 2012, issue

Kate Finn ’06 was a Peace Corps volunteer in a village in Costa Rica, teaching children and working with women’s groups, when a man raped her in 2007. The attacker’s family worked on the local police force, so she didn’t feel she could report the crime...Read more

STARTING OUT: Emma Bedard ’11

Published in the Feb. 8, 2012, issue

What she does: In mid-December, Bedard was in the middle of a five-week assignment as part of a team responsible for drilling an oil well in British Columbia, Canada. On the 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift, she worked closely with the directional driller and...Read more

Newsmakers

Published in the Feb. 8, 2012, issue

In December President Barack Obama nominated Democrat JEREMY STEIN ’83, top, a Harvard economist, and Republican JEROME “JAY” POWELL ’75, a former financial executive, to the board of the Federal Reserve. Stein, who teaches finance at Harvard, took a leave...Read more

READING ROOM: Alan Lightman ’70

Published in the Feb. 8, 2012, issue

The main character of Alan Lightman ’70’s latest novel, Mr g: A Novel About the Creation (Pantheon), wakes from a nap in the Void and decides, out of boredom, to create the universe: First time, then space, and eventually countless universes, but he...Read more

New Releases by Alumni

Published in the Feb. 8, 2012, issue

“With the exception of Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower was the most successful president of the 20th century,” argues JEAN EDWARD SMITH ’54 in Eisenhower in War and Peace (Random House), which Publishers Weekly called an “engrossing biography.” A senior...Read more

PAW ASKS: Bradley Martin ’64

Might relations between the two Koreas improve?

Published in the Feb. 8, 2012, issue

Few Western journalists have written as much about North Korea as Bradley K. Martin ’64, who has made numerous reporting trips to the country since 1979. He is the author of the 2004 ­history Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the...Read more

Max Gomez ’73 brings adult stem-cell research talks to Rome

Published in the Feb. 8, 2012, issue

A few years ago, Max Gomez ’73 received an unusual phone call. An official at NeoStem, a biopharma­ceutical company, told him that the company was considering partnering with the Vatican to promote adult stem-cell research.  “I said, ‘No, really — you’re...Read more

Alumni Day packed with events

Published in the Feb. 8, 2012, issue

Alumni Day is expected to draw about 1,200 people to campus Feb. 25, with programming that ranges from the lighthearted to the heartfelt: faculty lectures, athletic events, exhibitions, performances, and the annual Service of Remem­brance in the University...Read more

Dancing With Ataxia

Published in the Feb. 8, 2012, issue

(Erica Lehrer Books) This volume of poetry is informed partially by the progressive neurological disease of ataxia, and partially by the happy moments of life. The author, who was diagnosed with the disease in 2010, notes in one of the poems,...Read more

The Thought of Work

Published in the Feb. 8, 2012, issue

(Cornell University Press) Budd presents 10 historical and contemporary views of work across the social sciences and humanities while revealing the wide-ranging nature of work and its importance for the human experience. Budd is the...Read more

Founding Gods, Inventing Nations: Conquest and Culture Myths from Antiquity to Islam

Published in the Feb. 8, 2012, issue

(Princeton University Press) This book traces four thousand years of speculation on the origins of civilization. McCants uses primary sources and focuses on Greek, Roman, and Arab conquests in the Near East. While both the Greek and Roman...Read more

Reading the Islamic City: Discursive Practices and Legal Judgment

Published in the Feb. 8, 2012, issue

(Lexington Books) Kahera studies the effects of the Maliki school of Islamic law on the inhabitants of the Islamic city, the madinah. He considers Foucault’s power/knowledge matrix as it applies to scholars and legal judgments in the realm of...Read more

The Ethical Project

Published in the Feb. 8, 2012, issue

(Harvard University Press) Kitcher approaches the question of what ethics is, and how best to answer ethical questions, drawing on fields like evolutionary theory, primatology, archaeology, anthropology, psychology, and history. He suggests...Read more