Clare Lamman is part of a team of astrophysicists using data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument to map as many as 50 million galaxies. In this talk, delivered in April 2024 at the annual Harvard Horizons Symposium, Lamman describes her distinctive contribution to this effort—gauging the “intrinsic alignment” of galaxies to better underst…

Who cares for babies while their mothers are incarcerated? How stable are these households? And how does being exposed to a mother's incarceration in utero impact child development? These are the questions Harvard Griffin GSAS social scientist Bethany Kotlar set out to answer in her research. Combining her experience working with these families and…

Humanity generated over one septillion bits of data this past year alone. All that information takes energy to transmit. Lots of energy. In fact, data-associated technology could account for up to 20 percent of global energy production by 2030. Using light at the nanoscale level, physicist Dylan Renaud thinks he may have a way to meet the almost li…

Like the poetry of his fellow Latin Americans, the scholarship of Mauro Lazarovich, PhD '24, is not only humanist but also humanitarian. “I wanted to make a contribution to the humanities by saying that literature and art have something to bring to the table when we are talking about refugees,” he says. “And not only literature in general but speci…

In advance of Juneteenth 2024, we speak with University of Texas Professor Shirley Thompson, PhD '01, author of the forthcoming book No More Auction Block for Me, about how the experience of being treated as property has shaped the way that African Americans understand and relate to property themselves. Acknowledging the trauma of racism and white …

If you're one of the 32 percent of US adults who experienced symptoms of anxiety or depression last year, your doctor or mental health care provider may have recommended you learn meditation to help manage your stress. But how exactly does this age-old practice change the brain? This month on Colloquy, Richard Davidson, PhD '76, the William James a…

We're in the midst of the Muslim holy days of Ramadan, just past Western Christians' celebration of Easter, and looking forward to the Jewish Passover holidays in late April. We often refer to these traditions as the Abrahamic faiths—a reference to the childless man chosen by God in the Jewish Bible to be the father of a great nation, and who's an …

Tufts University Professor James Intriligator, PhD ’97, a human factors engineer, says that GPT is not a search engine, although many of us use it that way. It's more like a glider. It can take us to great knowledge and help us explore new territory. But we need to steer it smartly to get where we want to go. In these journeys, our own curiosity is…

In 2022, white residents of the Greater Boston area had about 19 times as much wealth as Black residents, $214,000 to $11,000, according to the Urban Institute. While the gap is particularly large in this part of the country, it's an issue across the US. In 2019, Black Americans held just $0.17 on average for every white dollar of wealth. Much has …

According to the 2023 Democracy Report of the VDEM Institute based at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, the advances and global levels of democracy made over the past 35 years have been wiped out. Seventy-two percent of the world's population now live in autocracies. Freedom of expression is deteriorating in 35 countries. Government censorshi…

Obesity in the United States has reached epidemic proportions, affecting millions of Americans and costing the healthcare system billions of dollars each year. As is so often the case with disease in this country, communities of color suffer disproportionately. Public health expert Sara Bleich, PhD ’07, says it’s time to deal with obesity as the ur…

This month on Colloquy, we speak with PhD student Grant Jones about Healing Attempt, his collaboration with Grammy Award-winning artist Esperanza Spaulding and Buddhist leader Lama Rod Owens that combines mindfulness and music to improve the wellbeing of people of color.Door Grant Jones

CHAPTER 4 : SIBLINGS LEARNING TOLERANCE THE HARD WAY ( PART ONE ) Narrated by : Chinedum . Obinna . Dickson Most of the time I do have sleepless nights , it also a norm to be awake or what I call the nightwatchman era , just to be mindful there could be an emergency late at night. So , sleeping at night sometimes becomes difficult because my parent…

The US economy is strong. Unemployment is close to a 50-year low, real wages are rising for those at the bottom of the income ladder, and inflation is down though still not entirely in the rearview mirror. You’d never know it from the press coverage, though, which tends to focus on how people feel about the economy, namely that it’s bad and getting…

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, July 2023 was actually the hottest month ever recorded on Earth. The heat wave caused hundreds of deaths, thousands of hospitalizations, and billions of dollars in damages. It also exacerbated droughts, wildfires, and power outages. The culprit behind this unprecedented heat is clima…

Every technology is accompanied by a cultural technique says the artist and media scholar Emilio Vavarella, a PhD candidate in film and visual studies and critical media practice at the Harvard Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. “You have the calculator, but you also have the number," he says. "Everything we do from speaking to being abl…

The global average temperature for July 2023 was the highest on record—and maybe the highest for the last 120 years according to the United Nations’ weather agency. In the United States, temperatures in Phoenix, Arizona reached a record 118 degrees Fahrenheit and hit highs of at least 110 degrees for 31 consecutive days—also a record. And yet the p…

In the years following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, thousands enlisted in the US military, were deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq, and became embroiled in conflicts that were often fought not on the battlefield but in rural villages and in cities. To prepare for that type of warfare, American troops often trained at bases in the sout…

Starting July 4, 2021, and lasting past the holiday, members of the LGBTQ community converged on Provincetown, Massachusetts, for a holiday that was supposed to be a celebration of the end of the long COVID-19 lockdown. When the weather turned rainy, they confidently took the party indoors, packing the little seaside town’s restaurants, bars, and c…

Growing up in Ferguson, Missouri, Harvard Griffin GSAS PhD student Steven Kasparek witnessed violence. He experienced it himself. He was left with some burning questions about which children go on to thrive and which struggle in the wake of exposure to violence. In this episode of Colloquy, Kasparek presents his research on the ways that childhood …

In 2014, Boko Haram terrorists kidnapped 276 female students from their dormitory at the Government Girls Secondary School in the Nigerian town of Chibok. The act inspired international outrage and a worldwide campaign to #BringBackOurGirls. Far less attention has been paid, however, to the plight of those who escape Boko Haram’s violence and becom…

It’s important to understand how massive stars live and die because of their role in the formation of some of the fundamental elements of the universe. That kind of science requires the development of computer simulations that model the universe from the Big Bang to today—an unimaginably complex task that is rife with uncertainties, computationally…

Ben Bellet, is a Harvard Griffin GSAS PhD student in clinical psychology who studies PTSD. A graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point, Bellet served as an officer in the army for five years. During his deployments in Afghanistan and Kuwait, he found himself less and less interested in logistics and operations and more interested in the Dos…

For this special Poetry Month bonus episode of Colloquy, a conversation with Harvard Professor Helen Vendler, PhD ’60—once called “the best poetry critic in America” by The New Republic’s Alfred Kazin—about the art of verse and why both the poetic form and its great works have enduring value in the era of the social media-induced seven-second atten…

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” Is this saying from a Zen Buddhist Text? The Hindu Bhagavad Gita? Actually, these are the words of Jesus . . . according to the 2,000-year-old Gospel of Thomas. The Princeton Univer…

As politicians and pundits wring their hands over the debt ceiling, the economist and Boston University professor Laurence Kotlikoff, PhD ’77, says the United States is already bankrupt. He calculates the health care and pension obligations to the country's rapidly aging population in the many trillions of dollars, far outpacing tax revenue in the …

“You have to be twice as good to go half as far.” It's a maxim that Black and Brown Americans know well, particularly in their experience of the educational system. In recent decades, college preparatory school programs have sprouted up to give middle school students of color a better chance to compete and gain admission to elite private institutio…

Does objectivity exist? Is it possible for news organizations to cut through the noise of the digital age and get citizens the information they need to be responsible participants in democracy? How can journalists build trust with disenchanted readers on both the right and the left of the political spectrum? Speaking to these questions are New York…

For many, the holiday season’s combination of festivities, family, and food makes this time of year joyous. If you're one of the nearly 29 million Americans who deal with an eating disorder at some point in your lifetime, though, the holidays can be hell—much like the rest of the year. In this episode of the Colloquy podcast, Harvard Medical School…

As the 2022 midterm elections approach, many citizens are worried about the state of our democracy. And with good reason. Our electoral system increasingly produces leaders who do not represent the will of the majority. The national popular vote was lost, for instance, by two of the last four presidents. In the evenly divided United States Senate, …

In this episode of Colloquy, part two of our discussion of guns and public health in America. In part one, we got a sense of the scope of the problem: nearly 400 million guns owned by US civilians, over 45,000 gun deaths in 2020, dramatically elevated risk of suicide among people who own handguns, and much more. So, can anything be done about the p…

In this episode of Colloquy, part one of a discussion about guns and public health in America. We'll move past the horrors of Uvalde—and El Paso, and Parkland, and Orlando, and Las Vegas, and Sandy Hook—and talk about the larger issues: too many gun deaths and injuries, too little training, information, and regulation. Leading us in the discussion …

"A victory for white life." That's how Illinois Congresswoman Mary Miller described the Supreme Court decision overturning the constitutional right to an abortion at a rally with former President Donald Trump last June. Miller, who had quoted Hitler in a previous speech, later said that she had meant to say "right to life." Jamie Marsella, a Harvar…

“We are living in an age of anxiety,” writes the Tufts University sociologist Natasha Warikoo, PhD '05, one in which even wealthy families who seem to “have it all” are insecure about their status. Her new book, Race at the Top, explores the ways in which educated, well-to-do parents in the prosperous East Coast suburb she calls “Woodcrest” (not it…

Co-chaired by GSAS Dean Emma Dench, Harvard University's Task Force on Managing Student Mental Health reported in 2020 that nearly one in four graduate students surveyed exhibited symptoms of moderate to severe depression. Nearly one in four exhibited symptoms of moderate to severe generalized anxiety. Underrepresented minority students, first-gene…

“Torn to pieces.” That's how the American frontiersman Davy Crockett, described the West Tennessee landscape. Nearly 15 years after it was rent asunder by the New Madrid earthquakes from December 1811 to February 1812. The tremors rocked an area that also included the present-day states of Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky and Illinois, reshaping not on…

Today on Colloquy, we bring you a recent conversation with two of the country's leading experts on eastern Europe and national security. Dr. Fiona Hill is a senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. She recently served as deputy assistant to the president and senior direc…

Wondering why the "COVID 19" you packed on during the pandemic won't go away no matter how hard you workout? Herman Pontzer, PhD '06, associate professor of evolutionary anthropology and global health at Duke University, says that the problem is in our brains, not our biceps—specifically, the way we understand the relationship between weight and ex…

The Black Agenda is a new collection of essays that centers the voices of Black experts—particularly women. Whether the issue is climate change, public health, economic inequality, or education, the contributors to The Black Agenda see social and racial justice as integral—not supplemental—to solutions. Along the way, the book interrogates our assu…

As the Christmas holiday approaches, Rev. Dr. Matthew Ichihashi Potts, PhD ’13, says that the United States is in the midst of an “apocalyptic moment.” The inequities of the COVID-19 pandemic, the fight for racial justice, and the crisis of climate change are revealing the aspects of our society—and ourselves—from which we can no longer turn away. …

The sociologist Blythe George, PhD '20, highlights the vibrance of rural indigenous communities amid the trauma that is the legacy of settler colonialism. A member of the Yurok tribe of northwestern California, George maps the deep connections indigenous people have to the sacred--and to each other--and says they have within their culture all they …

What's behind the price hikes on cars, food, fuel, and many other items? Is there too much money in the economy? Is it a supply chain problem? And is this a bump on the road to recovery from the economic shocks of the pandemic or a long-term trend? We ask GSAS alumna Betsey Stevenson, professor of public policy and economics at the University of Mi…

COVID-19 infections are surging again in the U.S., despite the availability of vaccines that are both safe and effective. In the inaugural episode of the GSAS Colloquy podcast, alumnus Michael Lin, a microbiologist and Professor at Stanford University talks about vaccination mandates as a path out of the pandemic, but also about the decline in vacc…