New England Association of Schools and Colleges
University students organize protests to call for divestment from fossil fuels
Students at Harvard University, joined by others at some of the country’s top universities, are taking a new tact. Rather than change lightbulbs and conserve more, they want their universities to empty fossil fuel company investments from their endowment.
In Praise of the Less-Than-Earnest Commencement Speech
It’s that time of year: when millions of students around the country slip into their caps and gowns, and say goodbye to their lives in the classroom, and hello to their lives in the bigger world. But first, they must sit through speeches, some of which will be boring, some of which will be inspiring, […]
The Scene from MIT — and Listener Messages for Boston
Along with most of Boston, the MIT campus is on lockdown this morning after the death of campus police officer Sean Collier in a shootout with the Boston bombing suspects last night. Fotini Christia is an associate professor of political science at MIT. Ryan Borker is a student at MIT who ran the the Boston […]
‘Triumphs of Experience’: Studying the Happy Life
Between 1939 and 1944, more than 200 Harvard students — all “physically and mentally healthy” men — were recruited to participate in a study. Norman Mailer and Leonard Bernstein were rejected, but the other 200-some odd students had the privilege of being tracked by Harvard Medical School for the rest of their lives. At first, […]
Smart Programs Read Shakespeare
Patrick Winston is Principal Investigator at MIT’s Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab. He believes that creating better artificial intelligence is not a matter of more powerful processing: we have to teach computers how to think more like humans. “We are a symbolic species,” he explains. “We painted caves early in our modern evolution. We […]