• Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • Home
  • About
    • About Current
    • Masthead
  • Podcasts
  • Blogs
    • The Way of Improvement Leads Home
    • The Arena
  • Reviews
  • Membership
  • Log In
  • Manage Your Account
  • Member Assistance Request

Harvard

Claudine Gay will be the 30th president of Harvard University

John Fea   |  December 15, 2022

Here is The Harvard Crimson: Claudine Gay will serve as the 30th president of Harvard University, becoming the first person of color to hold the school’s top post, the University announced Thursday, concluding a five-month search. Gay, the current dean...

(To access this content, become a member or log in.)

How slavery shaped Harvard

John Fea   |  April 27, 2022

Harvard president Lawrence S. Bacow and historian Tomiko Brown-Nagin, chair of the Presidential Initiative on Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery, explain in a piece at The Washington Post: In his groundbreaking 1935 book, “Black Reconstruction in America,” W.E.B. Du...

(To access this content, become a member or log in.)

InterVarsity director at Harvard explains why he voted for the atheist president of the university’s chaplains

John Fea   |  September 3, 2021

Get up to speed here. Pete Williamson is the team leader for InterVarsity’s Graduate and Faculty Ministries at Harvard and a Harvard Chaplain. Here is a taste of his recent piece at Christianity Today: For seven years, I have worked...

(To access this content, become a member or log in.)

Harvard’s new chief chaplain is an atheist

John Fea   |  August 26, 2021

Harvard recently chose Greg Epstein, an atheist, as its new chief chaplain. Here is Emma Goldberg at The New York Times; The Puritan colonists who settled in New England in the 1630s had a nagging concern about the churches they...

(To access this content, become a member or log in.)

Cornel West is threatening to leave Harvard

John Fea   |  February 19, 2021

Harvard offered the 67-year-old public intellectual an endowed chair, a ten year contract, and a pay raise, but Cornel West is holding out for tenure. I can’t read the Boston Globe story because I don’t have subscription, but here is...

(To access this content, become a member or log in.)

What John Quincy Adams Thought About His Pastors and Schoolmates

John Fea   |  May 21, 2020

This is a great post from J.L. Bell at Boston 1775. A taste: I promised more cattiness from John Quincy Adams as a college student. In his diary for the year 1787, Adams inserted several profiles of his classmates and other people he met...

(To access this content, become a member or log in.)

Moving Into the Dorms, Circa 1785

John Fea   |  September 4, 2019

My youngest daughter went to her first college class yesterday morning (Spanish I).  She moved into the dorms last week and has managed to survive four full days of new student orientation.  I think I will send her J.L. Bell’s...

(To access this content, become a member or log in.)

The Latest from the Randall Stephens Collection: Historian Baseball Card Series

John Fea   |  March 30, 2019

Check out the entire collection here.  ...

(To access this content, become a member or log in.)

Drew Gilpin Faust

John Fea   |  May 8, 2018

She is the outgoing president of Harvard and one of the best Civil War historians working today.  Here is Colleen Walsh’s Harvard Gazette interview with Drew Gilpin Faust: Q: You wrote a letter to President Eisenhower when you were 9 urging him to...

(To access this content, become a member or log in.)

“Till the stock of the Puritans die”

John Fea   |  March 29, 2018

Harvard University has changed the lyrics of the school’s alma mater. Goodbye Puritans. Read about it at The Boston Globe.  Here is a taste: The lyrics “Till the stock of the Puritans die,” the last verse in the 181-year-old song, will...

(To access this content, become a member or log in.)

Ghost Dissertation Advisers

John Fea   |  March 7, 2018

I am thankful that I had an excellent dissertation adviser who cared about my work.  Katrin Schultheiss, the current chair of the Department of History at George Washington University, did not have the same experience.  She described her experience (at...

(To access this content, become a member or log in.)

Drew Gilpin Faust on Free Speech: We live in a “highly polarized political and social environment, perhaps the most divisive since the era of the Civil War”

John Fea   |  May 27, 2017

Here is the Harvard president’s commencement address: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anZrIGqFAw4&w=560&h=315]...

(To access this content, become a member or log in.)

Slavery at Harvard

John Fea   |  March 14, 2017

I just came across this article Lydialyle Gibson’s essay in Harvard Magazine titled “A Vast Slave Society.”  It is a report on a one-day conference at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute on slavery at America’s first institution of higher education and other...

(To access this content, become a member or log in.)

Did John Quincy Adams Pass the Harvard Entrance Exam?

John Fea   |  January 24, 2017

He took the exam in 1786. Over at Boston 1775, J.L. Bell tells us what happened. Here is a taste: Here’s John Quincy’s description of the test from his diary: Between 9 and 10 in the morning, I went to the...

(To access this content, become a member or log in.)

Harvard Law School Removes Crest Linked to Slavery. Annette Gordon Reed Dissents

John Fea   |  March 5, 2016

Harvard Law School has decided to abandon the crest of the Isaac Royal family, a slaveholder who helped endow the school because it does not represent “Harvard values.” Not everyone at Harvard Law School agrees with the decision.  One of...

(To access this content, become a member or log in.)

Digital Archive of Massachusetts Anti-Slavery and Anti-Segregation Petitions

John Fea   |  March 3, 2015

Another great digital history project just went live last week.   Harvard just made accessible a searchable online database of close to 3500 antislavery and antisegregation petitions sent to the Massachusetts colonial and state legislatures from the 1600s to 1870....

(To access this content, become a member or log in.)

Can You Pass This Literacy Test?

John Fea   |  November 15, 2014

It was used in 1964 by the state of Louisiana to prevent Blacks from voting.  Watch some Harvard students take the test: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L44aX-pUTGE] Read more about the test here....

(To access this content, become a member or log in.)

Why Harvard Hates You

John Fea   |  May 21, 2013

Jonathan Rees is on fire. Using Springsteen’s version of “John Henry” as a lead in, he explains how Harvard University is using MOOCs to kill off as many academic jobs as possible.  Here is a taste: Exhibit A: After the...

(To access this content, become a member or log in.)

De-Disciplinizing the Humanities

John Fea   |  May 1, 2013

Chris Buczinsky of Calumet College of St. Joseph (Whiting, IN) and Robert Frodeman of the University of North Texas think that the humanities have been held captive for too long by the so-called “Harvard model.”  This model confines the humanities...

(To access this content, become a member or log in.)

Did the British Plan to Burn Harvard in 1775?

John Fea   |  April 17, 2013 Leave a Comment

J.L. Bell has a great post at Boston 1775 on a 1775 Thanksgiving sermon accusing the British of plotting to burn Harvard College.  The sermon was preached by Rev. Isaac Mansfield Jr., a Continental Army chaplain.  When it was published […]

Next Page »

Footer

Contact Forms

General Inquiries
Pitch Us
  • Manage Your Account
  • Member Assistance Request

Search

Subscribe via Email



Please wait...
Please enter all required fields Click to hide
Correct invalid entries Click to hide
Subscribe via Email


Please wait...
Please enter all required fields Click to hide
Correct invalid entries Click to hide