Contributing writer
Kaitlyn Tsai
Latest Content
‘You’re a Case Number’: The Bureaucratic Gaps Behind Harvard’s Mental Health Leaves of Absence
I set out to uncover the reasons behind these policies, as well as their effects; for some students, whether they take a leave and how they do so could be, and has been, a matter of life or death.
Fifteen Questions: Mina Cikara on Social Psychology, Intergroup Conflict, and Being a ‘Valley Rat’
Psychology professor Mina Cikara sat down with the magazine to discuss her influences and the psychology of discrimination. “Social psychology is rife with theorizing about all of the different inputs to intergroup conflict,” she says. “There are many, and they are multiply determined, and they are incredibly complex.”
Paraphernalia of Love
This year, I’ve found that my relationship with the past has gradually changed; that its pull, while still tender, has become primarily sharp and painful. I’ve found myself not just indulging in these trips down memory lane, but wishing I could stay in them forever.
The (Un)Official Harvard Dictionary: Fifteen Words and Where They Came From
As with any other language, each Harvard term or phrase has a complex backstory that reveals something about campus culture.
Best Advice-Giver: Lucas Woodley
“I listen to people. Or I try. And I think that’s usually a precursor to giving good advice.”
Looop Me In: A Return to the Days of Matchmaking
The app itself doesn’t match people — human matchmakers do.
Big Small Things
I love the job itself: the menial labor, the simplicity of the tasks, the smallness and apparent insignificance of my work.
Growth and Decay
In a time when I felt I had nothing, not even a sense of who I was, I remembered that the earth gives me — gives us — so many gifts that I don’t have to work to earn or prove myself worthy of.
Humanities and The “Battle of the University”
“What are the unique values that the sciences and humanities bring? And how can we put them in conversation together to solve big questions?”
“Do you want to watch a movie?”
My dad isn't the most emotionally expressive guy, but somehow sitting in the living room and watching a random movie he picked that neither of us particularly cares for says a lot more than "I love you."
The Living Memory of Derrick Bell
In a 1990 photograph, Derrick Bell, the first tenured Black professor at Harvard Law School, speaks as a crowd of students rally behind him. In the front row, students clutch a banner that reads, “Harvard Law School: On Strike for Diversity.” The photograph was taken during Bell’s controversial announcement that he would be taking a “leave of conscience,” refusing to return until HLS hired a Black, female, tenured professor.
The Virtual Harvard Project
When the pandemic struck, Rus Gant, head of Harvard's Visualization Research and Teaching Laboratory, decided that it was the time to turn his idea of making a 3D model of Harvard into a (virtual) reality.
