How can schools, educators, and families navigate the continued politicization and tensions around teaching and talking about race, racism, diversity, and equity? As laws banning critical race theory are passed, and the rhetoric grows intense, we'll discuss what educators and families can do to make sure students are supported, learning, and prepared with the knowledge they need to understand their own histories and the diverse and global society they’ll enter.
Join Harvard Law School for a book talk on "Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality" by HLS Professor Tomiko Brown-Nagin with panelists Kenneth Mack, Sheryll Cashin, and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham.
The new genre of interior painting enjoyed great popularity among 17th-century Dutch citizens. Its indoor scenes featuring people involved in mundane activities resemble the domestic settings in which they were hung. Other art forms such as perspective boxes and dollhouses further reinforce the link connecting physical, pictorial, and mental space by relating home to the interiority of the individual.
Double reed pipes, known as auloi, were popular musical instruments in the ancient Mediterranean. In 1921, archaeologists exploring the necropolis of Meroë (northern Sudan)—as part of the Harvard University-Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition—found a large collection of auloi in the pyramid of Nubian Queen Amanishakheto. Susanne Gänsicke will discuss the discovery’s importance and what it reveals about the connections between Nubia and the Mediterranean world as well as the significance of far-reaching musical traditions. She will also share recent efforts to conserve...
Scott Manning Stevens is an associate professor and director of Native American and Indigenous Studies at Syracuse University. In this lecture, he will discuss his new project, which focuses on ways Indigenous communities can confront cultural alienation and appropriation in museums, galleries, and archives.
Join us for a one-hour webinar exploring the legacy of Eileen Southern, author of The Music of Black Americans: A History and founder and editor of The Black Perspective in Music. In 1976, Eileen Southern became the first African American woman tenured in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS). Southern played an important institutional role at Harvard. She was central in developing the Department of Afro-American Studies (now African and African American Studies), serving as an early chair, and was on the faculty of the Department of Music, where she taught...
Initiation – In Love Solidarity is a choreographic narrative exploring the embodiment of the Middle Passage, and the resilience and evolving identities of women in the African diaspora. A film component of the work was created at historic sites in New England related to the transatlantic slave trade and emancipation. The imagery of the cowrie shell is present throughout, chosen as an emblem of the transformative identity of the Black female body.
Arts and sciences flourished in the Dutch Republic during the 17th century. Women such as Anna Maria van Schurman, Margareta van Godewick, and Anna Roemer Visscher excelled in scholarly pursuits and art practice. They were greatly admired, but they were nonetheless categorized as exceptional cases and never possessed the freedom to voice ideas enjoyed by their male counterparts. Working in a variety of art forms, including miniature painting, drawing, embroidery, and paper cutting, these women often meant to address no other audience than the artist herself.
In the 17th century, the Dutch Republic was a fast-paced, successful, modern society—economically, politically, and artistically. The work ethic of its citizens amazed foreign visitors, who compared the Dutch to crawling ants. Its flourishing art production showed the bustle of everyday life with almost scientific precision. Yet many artworks amassed by Dutch citizens in their homes portray scenes of silence and serenity. Such works, including genre pieces by Johannes Vermeer and still lifes featuring fruit, nuts or bread by Willem Heda and Adriaen Coorte, suggest a deep engagement with...
Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard—Online
Join the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research for a virtual W.E.B. Du Bois Lecture, "Trayvon Martin: No Chance Encounter," with Tricia Rose, Chancellor’s Professor of Africana Studies and the Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, Brown University.
David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard—Online
Latin America has been buffeted by economic crisis, soaring crime rates, major corruption scandals, and a devastating pandemic. These crises have threatened democracies across much of the region. DRCLAS has assembled four prominent scholars of Latin American politics to evaluate the state of democracy in the region. How serious are contemporary threats to Latin American democracies? What are the prospects for their survival?
FXB Center for Health & Human Rights at Harvard University—Online
On Tuesday, September 21, the FXB Center will host "Anti-Racism in Public Health Policies, Practice, and Research," a virtual symposium. One of the FXB Center’s latest core initiatives focuses on unpacking and addressing structural racism and health in the U.S. and other parts of the globe. The goal of the FXB Center is to deepen the knowledge base and fill gaps in content and methodology, while ensuring that research and evidence is responsive to community needs and informs policymaking.
The symposium aims to launch this initiative and start a series of conversations and...
Join us for a special session in which Professor David Moss, author of the acclaimed book “Democracy: A Case Study,” makes history come alive with an audience-driven discussion of Martin Luther King Jr. and the struggle for voting rights. Professor Moss will bring his wildly popular approach to teaching the history of American democracy to a new stage in this public forum hosted by Harvard Business School.
So please bring your ideas, and leave your preconceptions at the door. It will be an afternoon that challenges the way you think about America’s history and civic life – and...
Across the United States, children under the age of 18 can be tried as adults in criminal court. Although the practice is condemned by international law, we are the only country in the world that sentences young people to life in prison without the possibility of parole. At the same time, recent developments in neuroscience research demonstrate that the human brain is not fully developed until after the age of 25.
This program will consider the ways we punish young people in the American criminal legal system and how our policies could be reformed. We will bring together a...
In the third installment of the Future of Cultural Diplomacy Series, UNESCO’s Director-General Audrey Azoulay will offer her unique perspective on cultural diplomacy as the leader of one of the world’s largest multilateral agencies focused on education, scientific and cultural issues.
In a conversation co-moderated by Ambassador Nicholas Burns and Carla Dirlikov Canales, Director-General Azoulay will discuss UNESCO’s current priorities, including education, culture, gender equality, and freedom of expression, and discuss how UNESCO has provided multilateral approaches to...
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard—Online
On Radcliffe Day 2021—Friday, May 28—Harvard Radcliffe Institute will award the Radcliffe Medal to Melinda Gates.
Expert panelists will then discuss achieving gender equity in the United States, each offering her own perspective informed by deep expertise and unique experience. The discussion will be moderated by the distinguished American historian and Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor at Harvard University Drew Gilpin Faust, who was founding dean of the Radcliffe Institute and the first woman to serve as president of Harvard.
Davis Center for Russian & Eurasian Studies—Online
May 21 marks the centenary of the birth of Andrei Sakharov, one of the great physicists of the twentieth century who was also one of the world’s most courageous and renowned proponents of freedom and human rights. His name nowadays is universally linked with the quest for human rights and democracy.
As the key figure in the Soviet Union’s development of a thermonuclear bomb, Sakharov could have enjoyed a life of privilege and luxury. But to do so would have meant closing his eyes to the injustice and repression around him. This was something that Sakharov, unlike the vast...
The Southern Black community catalyzed the movement for free public schools for all children. This community also led the efforts to desegregate schools. Despite these efforts, the South remains home to some of the largest educational inequities within our nation. Yet, many discussions about educational equity are devoid of Southern representation. This is problematic considering that Southern states have higher rates of poverty and are home to one-third of all K-12 students, 56% of all Black students, and one-third of our nation’s ELL and migrant student populations.