Conversations
Jonathan Alter Shares Insight on Obama, Media
Jonathan Alter ’79 entertained a group of Harvard students on Thursday with colorful stories of recent presidential campaigns and the personal life of President Obama, explaining that our president is “fundamentally different in private and public.”
15 Questions with Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood takes her seat behind a desk in a back room of First Parish Church. She has 30 minutes until her sold-out Harvard Book Store reading—and hundreds of books to transform into retail-ready Signed Copies before she can begin. She gets to work.
2+2, 2+3
This year, the junior class is getting a taste of the fun, thanks to a new deferred admission program that offers Harvard students the chance to apply to Harvard Law School during their junior year. Known as the Junior Deferral Pilot, or 2+3, the new initiative was introduced last spring and is modeled along the same lines as Harvard Business School’s 2+2 Program, which began in 2007.
10 Questions with Interim Dean Donald H. Pfister
Those who read the first email that Interim Dean Donald H. Pfister sent to the college may recall that he’s a big fan of fungi jokes—just don’t tell him a fungi “fun-guy” joke (the man’s heard it before, and is looking for something new). But, who is Pfister really? Eager to hear more of Pfister’s stories and quirks, FM sat down with him in the lawn chairs outside Hollis Hall.
From Expos to the Pulitzer
Ten years ago, Paul Harding was known as a talented, if demanding, Expos preceptor and erstwhile member of a rock band called Cold Water Flat. Back in town this week for a reading upon the release of his second book, “Enon,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning author bore little resemblance to his former self.
Hey Professor: David E. Sanger on Syria
In a prime-time speech on Tuesday, President Obama addressed the nation to make the case for intervention in Syria and outline recent developments
A Conversation with Former Senator Tim Wirth
FM sat down with the former Senator of Colorado Tim Wirth '61 to chat about politics, Harvard life, Gov 1310, and of course, Hillary Clinton.
7 Questions with Neil Gaiman
Near the end of his guest lecture in Folklore and Mythology 90i, Neil Gaiman informs the students that he doesn’t like doing interviews because it takes up time he could be using to work on a story, write a screenplay, or author a graphic novel. My gut drops when I then introduce myself as the reporter who’s going to prevent him from writing for the next half-hour. He smiles and shrugs, “We ought to get started then.”
Mapping Our Cities: A Conversation with Becky Cooper '10
I realized that those maps, in series, told an interesting story about my life that summer. They told an interesting story of the city. In some ways, it was a more honest story than the one I was building [for my boss] because it was celebrating the subjectivity of the mapmaker. Those two realizations, coupled with my having read Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities” the year before, grew into this: I wanted to give really small, limited maps to as many New Yorkers as possible and have them map their New Yorks. And then, in series, have a New York emerge from there.
Thinking Outside the Solo Cup
On Harvard’s campus, as on those of other colleges, alcohol is by all accounts accessible and abundant. A red Solo cup is a ubiquitous accessory to many social events. Yet despite the presence of alcohol on campus, a number of Harvard students choose not to drink. For many of these students, this decision is based on a variety of personal factors, all challenging the assumption that social life in college necessarily involves alcohol.
The Fundamental Mira Nair
“I wanted to recomplicate what is so reductive, what has been so reductive and so simple: the bad guys and the good guys,” filmmaker Mira Nair ’79 says. I’m sitting with Nair and two other journalists in a conference room at the Charles Hotel, discussing Nair’s new film, “The Reluctant Fundamentalist,” which comes out in May. “I wanted very much to have that complexity of the human being in both characters—not just two countries, not two flags, but two real people.”
10 Questions with Benjamin B. Ferencz
On April 10, Ferencz returned to Harvard. “Tell me your problems,” Ferencz says to me, trying to distract me from the impending interview. I tell him that I have none, that I want to hear his story. The interview begins before Ferencz can sneak back into the servery for dessert.
