Results tagged “harvardcollege”

E. Forbes Smiley III received a $2.3 million restitution fine in addition to his prison sentence for thefts of nearly 100 rare historic maps. It has been nearly two years in the making. E. Forbes Smiley III (it's such a great name, can't we use the whole thing all the time?) was caught by a Yale librarian as an X-acto knife was found near him. It was discovered he had some rare maps from the...

A bomb scare emptied out the Alewife T, a daycare, and a restaurant yesterday morning. David Toomey, a librarian at the Harvard College Library, lost it and said he had a bomb in his backpack. He said, "You might want to check the backpack." And, boy, did they ever! A daycare and a restaurant were also evacuated. Judging from transit police's comments at WHDH, the law went after Toomey's backpack: "We responded, we found...

Harvard students were producing yet another season of Ivory Tower. The good folks at IvyGate just reminded us that season 4 of the all new Ivory Tower is well under way. The Harvard College soap opera describes themselves as a show "Completely acted, directed, written, and produced by Harvard undergraduates, Ivory Tower is Harvard’s very own soap opera. Both parodying and revealing the world of Ivy League sex, lies and privilege, college has never been this much fun! Ivory Tower provides the only campus opportunity for professionally-minded students to start producing fiction television today." After the 90's version was retired from Harvard-Radcliffe Television the show hit a hiatus until broadband brought it back. Now you can catch all the latest action from the other side of the river via YouTube. Episode 1 of season 4 hit the net in November, just last week Episode 2 was granted upload status. While students are spending their precious moments creating quality internet episodes the members of the presidential search committee are hard at work. They're still looking for that replacement for the departed Larry Summers. The Crimson recently shortened their list to four candidates; today they're saying "members have expressed enthusiasm" about two of the four. Sounds steamy – stay tuned an announcement is due in early February. In the mean time feel free to catch up on your favorite soap you keep forgetting to TiVo.

Sorry, Kathleen Breeden, you're no Kaavya Viswanathan. The Harvard Crimson broke the story last spring that then Harvard College sophomore, now junior, Viswanathan had included some suspiciously similar passages in her book How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life. This week they turned on one of their own and revoked two political cartoons drawn by Kathleen E. Breeden citing apparent plagiarism. The student-run paper cites two instances, including the October...

The Harvard Crimson reports that there's been a bit of a scuffle over the tour between the guides and the University administration. Student businesses must pass muster with an established bureaucracy before they're sanctioned by the University, otherwise they're not allowed to be in business. Looking to maintain the non-profit status of the institution concerns were expressed with the "appearance" of the tours presence. Specific mention was made of their website HarvardTour.com – the phrases Harvard and dot com together, when not in relation to the independent Harvard Bookstore, are troubling to the University. Jones and Schofield-Bodt didn't think they'd violated any policy. In fact they'd found a little loophole in the policy which allowed them to operate. They've come to an agreement with the administration that allows them to operate their thrice-daily tours of campus, they'll just make sure to always refer to it as the "Unofficial Hahvahd Tour" from now on. Come fall when classes resume they may be forced to go through the approval process if they are to continue running the tour.

We’ll play into the game, too – we like Weezer. Rivers Cuomo, frontman for Weezer, is finishing up his last few courses at Harvard College. He’s 35 and going for the undergraduate degree he hasn’t finished yet. It’s been more than 10 years in the making - dotted with tours, album releases, and commitments other than academics. And apparently he’s got no fridge in his room and keeps on wearing the same shirt. Back in...

Boston intellectuals are once again duking it out on the international stage, this time in the Wall Street Journal and the London Review of Books. Professor Ruth Wisse, Harvard Professor of Yiddish and comparative literature, has a piece in today's Journal (online version requires subscription) in which she assails Professors Stephen Walt, of Harvard's Kennedy School, and John Mearsheimer (of U. Chicago) for their article in the British publication, which suggests that U.S. foreign policy decision makers are in the thrall of a small group of moneyed, pro-Israel lobbyists, and that support for Israel is not in the United States' best interest. (Walt and Mearsheimer's longer working paper, on which the LRB piece is based, can be seen here.)

When Bostonist didn't get into Harvard Law School, we settled for another fine, albeit architecturally challenged, institution in the area (and married a Harvard grad student, which made us feel much better). But according to a story in today's New York Times, high school students rejected by Harvard College are increasingly doing bachelor's degrees at the Harvard Extension School, seeing it as the Harvard experience on the cheap. (Why not just go to community college, you ask? A Harvard writing instructor exlpains: "People say Harvard-trained, they don't say Bunker Hill Community College-trained." Ouch.)

This afternoon Al Franken rocked Air America’s AM airwaves* from right here in the Hub. As part of a nation-wide book tour Franken made his appearance in Boston and coupled it with a broadcast of his three hour program from the Wilbur in the Theatre District. Harvard alum Franken pulled on the alumni network to fill his show's time slot. Robert Putnam from the Kennedy School of Government, Laurence Tribe from Harvard Law School, Julius Richmond and Rashi Fein form Harvard Medical School, Atul Gawande from the Harvard School of Public Health joined Franken and Harvard College and Harvard Law School grad and current Congressman Barney Frank for conversations. Boston, "a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America,” according to Senator Santorum, was home to the progressive talk show and a half dozen of those liberal elites from that little school across the river, Harvard. Franken’s “zero spin zone” conversed with some intelligentsia before Franken hopped the red line into his hired car service on his way back up to Cambridge where he read from his new book The Truth (with jokes) at the Charles Hotel in – wait for it – Harvard Square. Bostonist doesn’t really have a problem having that prestigious University across the river, but it seems like Franken focused a bit too much “in the community” and overlooked some of the gems that Boston has to offer. Just think what he could have done with Mitt on the radio. It was nice to have you back in the Hub, Al, even if you were just promoting Ve Ri Tas (with jokes).

Though Bostonians may not have the rugged individualism of Mainers or the crunchy optimism of Vermonters, this week we do have a 70% chance of medium-strength aurorae. At least, that's what Bostonist heard from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), a joint collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Harvard College Observatory.