2021 Feb 03
Toxic Speech and Damaged Bodies
5:00pm to 6:00pm
Location: 
Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard—Online
What does it matter if our speech practices abandon truth, license violence, instill fear? Toxic speech has the power not only to shape the social body—our very practices of being and interacting—but also to injure individual bodies. When a political or cult leader, for example, licenses his followers to commit violent crimes against those deemed Other, we see an overt case of speech engendering physical harm. More insidious and ubiquitous are the everyday speech practices that generate harms ranging from physical violence to social exclusion and damaged health. Using tools from both...
Read more about Toxic Speech and Damaged Bodies
2021 Feb 03
The Sisyphus Project
12:00pm to 1:00pm
Location: 
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard—Online
At Radcliffe, Héctor Tobar is at work on a nonfiction book about the profound shifts in American culture brought forth by the anti-immigrant movement. He will explore how a century of immigration policy and the evolving image of the “alien” in US culture have helped shape American notions of racial identity and “whiteness.” At the same time, Americans with Latin American roots are creating a collective identity formed from narratives of empire, migration, and inequality.
...
Read more about The Sisyphus Project
2021 Feb 02
Protest as Politics: African American Young Adults, Reimagining Democracy
4:00pm to 5:00pm
Location: 
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard—Online
During these unprecedented times, we have watched young people—a great many of them African Americans—taking to the streets in all 50 states in support of justice for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, while also seeking to address the current failures of policing, criminal justice, and the economy; as well as the existence of white supremacy and anti-Blackness. How does the precarious position of African American young adults facilitate a reimagining of democracy? What does this reimagining mean for American politics?
...
Read more about Protest as Politics: African American Young Adults, Reimagining Democracy
2021 Feb 02
Art Talk Live: The Abject Object—Decay and Irreverence in Dieter Roth’s Multiples
12:30pm to 1:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Art Museums—Online
Known for his iconoclastic use of nontraditional artistic materials, ranging from chocolate to playing cards to animal excrement, artist Dieter Roth (1930–1998) underscored processes of decomposition in his work. Curatorial fellow Lauren Hanson considers how Roth’s “decay objects” from the 1960s and ’70s harness self-deprecating humor to challenge notions of originality, artistic genius, and the museum as a site of preservation.
...
Read more about Art Talk Live: The Abject Object—Decay and Irreverence in Dieter Roth’s Multiples
2021 Feb 02
Fearing the Worst: How the Korean War Transformed the Cold War
12:15pm to 1:45pm
Location: 
Davis Center for Russian & Eurasian Studies—Online
After World War II, the escalating tensions of the Cold War shaped the international system. Fearing the Worst explains how the Korean War fundamentally changed postwar competition between the United States and the Soviet Union into a militarized confrontation that would last decades.
Samuel F. Wells Jr. examines how military and political events interacted to escalate the conflict. Decisions made by the Truman administration in the first six months of the...
Read more about Fearing the Worst: How the Korean War Transformed the Cold War
2021 Feb 02
Building a Large-Scale SARS-CoV-2 Test Lab: Scientific and Leadership Lessons
12:00pm to 1:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Medical School—Online
Stacey Gabriel, PhD, senior director of the Genomics Platform at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, led the Broad’s COVID-era pivot to becoming one of the foremost SARS-CoV-2 testing centers in the country (now closing in on nine million tests performed). Realizing this vision in such a short time frame required strong leadership skills, as well as the ability to solve myriad technological, supply chain, IT and clinical workflow challenges. In this webinar, Stacey Gabriel will share her behind-the-scenes perspectives about the keys to her organization’s...
Read more about Building a Large-Scale SARS-CoV-2 Test Lab: Scientific and Leadership Lessons
2021 Feb 02
Ascent to Glory: How One Hundred Years of Solitude Was Written and Became a Global Classic
12:00pm to 1:30pm
Location: 
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard—Online
Book Panel on Ascent to Glory: How One Hundred Years of Solitude Was Written and Became a Global Classic by Álvaro Santana-Acuña
Gabriel García Márquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude seemed destined for obscurity upon its publication in 1967. The little-known author, small publisher, magical style, and setting in a remote Caribbean village were hardly the usual ingredients for success in the literary marketplace. Yet today it ranks among the best-selling books of all time. Translated into dozens of languages, it continues to enter the lives...
Read more about Ascent to Glory: How One Hundred Years of Solitude Was Written and Became a Global Classic
2021 Feb 01
What Does Public Service Mean To You?
6:00pm to 7:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Kennedy School, Center for Public Leadership—Online
Public service comes in many forms. Whether through non-profits, government, or the military, our students have served in diverse ways all across the globe. Following a special introduction by CPL director Amb. Wendy R. Sherman, hear from three of the Kennedy School's own in a discussion over the different forms of public service as we kick off Public Service Week.
PANELISTS:
Hassaan Ebrahim MPP 2021, CEO, Hikma Health
Charlene Han MC/MPA 2021, Former Policy Director, Singapore Ministry of Social and Family Development
Bill Walker MC/MPA 2021, Former Marine...
Read more about What Does Public Service Mean To You?
2021 Feb 01
Psychedelics: The Ancient Religion with No Name?
5:00pm to 6:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Divinity School—Online
The most influential religious historian of the 20th century, Huston Smith, once referred to it as the "best-kept secret" in history. Did the ancient Greeks use drugs to find God? And did the earliest Christians inherit the same secret tradition? A profound knowledge of visionary plants, herbs, and fungi passed from one generation to the next, ever since the Stone Age? Join us for a discussion between CSWR Director Charles Stang and Brian Muraresku about his new book, The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name, a groundbreaking dive into the role of psychedelics...
Read more about Psychedelics: The Ancient Religion with No Name?
2021 Feb 01
Mahindra Humanities Center Medieval Studies Seminar
4:00pm to 5:30pm
Location: 
Harvard University Committee on Medieval Studies—Online
A Playground for Poets: author Maria Dahvana Headley discusses her new translation of Beowulf (Farrar Strauss Giroux, 2019) with Daniel Donoghue, John P. Marquand Professor of English and Chair of the Standing Committee on Medieval Studies. Co-sponsored by the Mahindra Humanities Center Rethinking Translation Seminar and the Harvard...
Read more about Mahindra Humanities Center Medieval Studies Seminar
2021 Feb 01
‘A Catalyst for Humanity’: A Conversation with Isabel Wilkerson
1:00pm to 2:00pm
Location: 
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health—Online
What are the invisible social strata that define and divide America? How does this unseen ranking underlie racism? And how do caste dynamics systematically lessen the value of Black lives? Join Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson, author of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, and esteemed social scientist David Williams for a conversation about embedded power inequities–and their cost to us all. Moderated by CNN anchor, Don Lemon.
...
Read more about ‘A Catalyst for Humanity’: A Conversation with Isabel Wilkerson
2021 Feb 01
Human Rights and the Future World Order
12:00pm to 1:30pm
Location: 
Harvard Kennedy School, Belfer Center—Online
The issue of human rights presents a special challenge for any effort to construct a workable world order. Can democracies and their publics remain true to their stated values within a world where human rights abuses are still widespread, without meddling into other nations' domestic political affairs or presuming to know exactly how to achieve these ends globally? To what extent will differences over basic notions of human rights undermine efforts to cooperate on trade, climate, arms control, or other pressing global problems?
...
Read more about Human Rights and the Future World Order
2021 Jan 29
Art Study Center Seminar at Home: Art & Technology 3,500 Years Ago
11:00am to 12:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Art Museums—Online
In the mid-second millennium BCE, sculptors, painters, potters, and glass- and metalworkers were busy in the northern Mesopotamian town of Nuzi (Iraq). Some of their products are in the collection of the Harvard Art Museums, which supported excavations at the site between 1925 and 1931. In this online talk, conservation scientist Katherine Eremin and curator Susanne Ebbinghaus will discuss the discovery of these objects and how technical study over decades has revealed the secrets of their making, as well as plans for future display.
...
Read more about Art Study Center Seminar at Home: Art & Technology 3,500 Years Ago
2021 Jan 22
The COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout: What’s Ahead?
12:00pm to 1:00pm
Location: 
Online—Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
As the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines unfolds in the United States, numerous questions around distribution, supply, hesitancy, and efficacy persist. And the stakes have never been higher, as numbers of deaths and cases repeatedly break records. In this discussion, experts will review the COVID-19 vaccine distribution plan, address safety concerns, explore upcoming expected vaccines, and discuss implications of virus variants.
...
Read more about The COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout: What’s Ahead?
2021 Jan 21
Art Talk Live: Setting the Fans Afloat
2:00pm to 2:30pm
Location: 
Online—Harvard Art Museums
Exhibition designer Elie Glyn and production specialist Sean Lunsford will explain the creative process behind the planning and installation of a display of framed fans by Suzuki Kiitsu, featured in the special exhibition Painting Edo: Japanese Art from the Feinberg Collection.
Led by:
Elie Glyn, Assistant Director for Exhibitions, Collections Management
Sean Lunsford, Exhibition Production Specialist, Collections Management...
Read more about Art Talk Live: Setting the Fans Afloat
2021 Jan 14
Art Talk Live: Ben Shahn and Folk Music
2:00pm to 2:30pm
Location: 
Harvard Art Museums—Online
During the Great Depression, artist Ben Shahn produced hundreds of photographs while working for the Farm Security Administration. Among his most common subjects were musicians. In this talk, curatorial fellow Kappy Mintie will examine Shahn’s interest in folk music in the context of concurrent government efforts to record this important strand of American music.
Led by:
Katherine “Kappy” Mintie, John R. and Barbara Robinson Family Curatorial Fellow in Photography, Division of Modern and Contemporary Art
...
Read more about Art Talk Live: Ben Shahn and Folk Music
2021 Jan 07
Art Talk Live: Love at the Margins
2:00pm to 2:30pm
Location: 
Harvard Art Museums—Online
Members of the itinerant Roma, or Romani, people arrived in Europe by the Middle Ages and have held a prominent place in Western art and literature, from the work of Shakespeare and Hieronymus Bosch to that of the many Roma artists and writers active today. This talk will focus on an unusual and moving depiction of a Roma woman and child by Dutch artist Jacques de Gheyn, exploring it in relation to the broader visual and literary tradition and to the realities of the lives of the Roma in the 17th-century Netherlands.
Led by:
Joanna Sheers Seidenstein,...
Read more about Art Talk Live: Love at the Margins
2020 Dec 17
Art Talk Live: Erased!
2:00pm to 2:30pm
Location: 
Harvard Art Museums—Online
Public images of rulers serve as potent symbols of power and propaganda. In ancient Rome, tyrannical emperors were deposed and assassinated, their likenesses defaced by angry citizens and sometimes by official decree.
This talk is part of a series investigating power dynamics in artworks across the collections. Considering intersections of art and power, our curatorial team discusses how artists engage with social and political crises, use art to upset systems of power, and imagine more equitable futures.
...
Read more about Art Talk Live: Erased!
2020 Dec 15
Book Talk: Exposed: Why Our Health Insurance Is Incomplete and What Can Be Done About It
12:00pm to 1:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Law School—Online
Reshaping health insurance is a divisive topic in American politics today. Our current system expects patients to bear substantial health costs through deductibles, copayments, and coinsurance, creating a tradeoff for patients that can keep them from accessing the care they need. In his book, Exposed: Why Our Health Insurance Is Incomplete and What Can Be Done about It,...
Read more about Book Talk: Exposed: Why Our Health Insurance Is Incomplete and What Can Be Done About It
2020 Dec 10
Student Guide Alumni Tour: Why Museums Matter
8:00pm to 9:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Art Museums—Online
Alumni of the Ho Family Student Guide Program talk about works of art they still think about, how their museum experience affected their path after graduation, and how this experience feeds into their current work in architecture, social justice, and environmental policy.
Join David Kurlander ’15, Catarina Martinez ’15, and John Wang ’15—all members of the first Student Guide cohort in our renovated building—for an interactive conversation with Camran Mani, the Cunningham Curatorial Fellow in Academic and Public Programs, about how they have carried forward their museum...
Read more about Student Guide Alumni Tour: Why Museums Matter

Pages