CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
October 5, 2011 | By Elaine Woo, Los Angeles Times
Oscar Handlin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian at Harvard University whose classic portrait of 19th century European emigrants launched the modern study of immigration as the predominant American story, died Sept. 20 in Cambridge, Mass. He was 95. The cause was a heart attack, said his wife, Lilian. Handlin, who taught at Harvard University for nearly 50 years, was a prolific scholar best known for "The Uprooted: the Epic Story of the Great Migrations that Made the American People.
BUSINESS
September 21, 2010 | Peter Nicholas and Jim Puzzanghera
Amid deepening anxiety over the slow place of recovery from the recession, President Obama on Tuesday announced the departure of one of his top economic advisors. Lawrence Summers, known as a brilliant economic thinker with a prickly personality, will step down at the end of the year to return to Harvard University, where he had a controversial five-year stint as president. He will be the third key member of Obama's economic team to leave in a mid-term election year in which the anemic economy could lead to large Democratic congressional losses in November.
OPINION
July 13, 2010 | By Robert H. Giles
It is not uncommon for international journalists who come to Harvard University as Nieman fellows to be out of favor with their governments. They often work in countries where free expression and the rule of law exist in name only. They report in an atmosphere of danger where threats, and sometimes violence, are common tools to encourage self-censorship and silence truth-telling. Colombian journalist Hollman Morris has long worked in challenging conditions, producing probing television reports that document his country's long and complex civil war. He has built contacts with the left-wing guerilla group known as the FARC and told stories of the conflict's victims.
NATIONAL
October 11, 2009 | Times Wire Reports
Harvard University has agreed to digitize more than 51,000 rare Chinese books, making them freely available. The Harvard College Library and the National Library of China signed the deal Friday.
TRAVEL
October 4, 2009 | Christopher Reynolds
Hanging around in Cambridge has its drawbacks. You may stub your toe or splinter a heel on the uneven sidewalks. You may discover that John Harvard smells funny. You may be arrested for obstreperousness inside your own lodging (see Gates, Henry Louis Jr.). And if you spend enough time among these big, old buildings and bright, young students, you may begin to feel old, or undereducated, or both. But spend the time anyway. Whether or not you have a prospective freshman in your family, this country's first college town is full of far more American history, smart shops, cool museums, inviting restaurants and all-around entertainment than your average city of 95,000.
OPINION
July 22, 2009
In an incident that raised eyebrows from coast to coast, Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., a prominent scholar and author, was arrested by the Cambridge Police Department after officers responded to reports that black men were breaking into his house. Gates had just arrived home from China and was trying to force open his jammed front door with the help of his hired driver when a neighbor called the police. Exactly what happened after that isn't clear.