Harvard Yard

The chairs are bright. It is something everyone comments on. When they first arrived a few years ago as an experiment in changing Harvard Yard as a public space, one of the first things people pointed out was how they did not look very Harvard. Mostly, people said this in a good way. There were a couple hundred of them in lollipop-colored aluminum - yellow and orange and red and neon green - light and untethered, available for whatever. They appeared after a committee charged with improving the social spaces on campus thought one way to soften the feel of the Yard was to introduce a...

The chairs are bright. It is something everyone comments on. When they first arrived a few years ago as an experiment in changing Harvard Yard as a public space, one of the first things people pointed out was how they did not look very Harvard. Mostly, people said this in a good way. There were a couple hundred of them in lollipop-colored aluminum - yellow and orange and red and neon green - light and untethered, available for whatever. They appeared after a committee charged with improving the social spaces on campus thought one way to soften the feel of the Yard was to introduce a...

At hallowed sites around Boston, history feels so palpable that you can almost hear voices from the past. In Harvard Yard this week, you can actually hear some of those voices. To commemorate its 375th anniversary, Harvard has installed speakers above its historic yard to broadcast bits of addresses delivered nearby. The experience can be arresting. Clips from Bill Gates and W.E.B. DuBois touch on the speakers' formative experiences at Harvard, and sound bites from J.K. Rowling and Alan Greenspan offer uplifting advice.

‘Slow dancing" conjures images of steamy tangos in sultry, smoky nightclubs — or maybe just nostalgic recollections of your high school prom. But what photographer and installation artist David Michalek is bringing to Harvard Yard is more like "really slow dancing. " Using a camera that shoots 1,000 frames per second, Michalek filmed five-second dance sequences and stretched them out to 10 minutes. Kicking off the annual Harvard Arts First Festival, "Slow Dancing" will be projected on three screens spread across the facade of Widener Library for the next 10 nights.

A bicyclist and pedestrians made their way along shoveled walkways in Harvard Yard yesterday surrounded by the rare sight of snow-covered ground. A storm left more than 6 inches of snow in areas of northern New England but dropped only about 1 inch in the Boston area. Another storm arrives today, this one bringing mostly rain.

CAMBRIDGE — He waited patiently with the horde for his Mr. Bartley’s burger. He amiably patted the bronze boot of John Harvard, bought two dry tomes at a bookstore, and paused to ask a clutch of students the one question on everyone’s mind yesterday. “Could you tell me where the microphysics building is?’’ Shaquille O’Neal patiently inquired. Jolly, immense, amused, amusing, patient, thoughtful, and soon to be draped in green, O’Neal, the NBA’s most celebrated giant, took on Harvard Square yesterday.

CAMBRIDGE - Pop quiz question one: You have a metal plate with a hole in it. You microwave the plate. Does the hole grow, shrink, or stay the same? Question two: If Harvard University physicist Eric Mazur lectures a class of highly intelligent students on how atoms move away from each other in response to heat, then asks them question one, how many give the wrong answer? Most of them, it turns out, because one of the least effective ways to teach is to stand in an auditorium and deliver a monologue on facts, as Mazur did in explaining the motion of atoms.

‘Slow dancing" conjures images of steamy tangos in sultry, smoky nightclubs — or maybe just nostalgic recollections of your high school prom. But what photographer and installation artist David Michalek is bringing to Harvard Yard is more like "really slow dancing. " Using a camera that shoots 1,000 frames per second, Michalek filmed five-second dance sequences and stretched them out to 10 minutes. Kicking off the annual Harvard Arts First Festival, "Slow Dancing" will be projected on three screens spread across the facade of Widener Library for the next...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — Lady Gaga has launched a youth foundation by urging young people to ‘‘challenge meanness and cruelty. " The singer spoke Wednesday to a crowd of more than 1,100 students, faculty and invited guests at Harvard University. Oprah Winfrey, U.S. Health and Human Service Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and others joined her in kicking off the Born This Way Foundation. It's named after her 2011 hit song with lyrics that promote self empowerment.

CAMBRIDGE -- Surrounded by rows of oak trees in the freshly cut green of Harvard Yard, Jordan Jones gestured to the brick walls and remarked on the architectural styles as any good university tour guide would. Then, he deviated into a spiel no good university tour guide would. On the eve of winter finals during his freshman year, he said, he stepped outside in his bathrobe, let out a ferocious yell, and stripped, joining roughly 1,000 naked classmates as they shouted and darted across Harvard Yard.

A scholarship student from Taunton, Fred Jewett arrived at Harvard College in 1953 and thought the campus would be a stop in his journey to a job with the Foreign Service or in international business. "Contrary to all my expectations, my professional life has kept me in Cambridge and at Harvard," he wrote in 1982. With the exception of a year in France on a fellowship, Mr. Jewett's life was Harvard from the time he set foot on campus as a freshman until he retired as dean of the college in 1995.

Tommy Amaker was talking about the past to make a point about the future. When you have a Duke pedigree, as Amaker does (former player and assistant coach under Mike Krzyzewski), a Coach K reference is almost expected. "About 100 years ago, as a freshman for Coach K, I learned that he had a favorite phrase," said Amaker. " ‘Next play. What is our next play?' " Simple translation: Once you have accomplished your goal, start thinking about another one. "That's what we will tell our kids," said Amaker, who is completing his fifth year as the Harvard men's...

A bicyclist and pedestrians made their way along shoveled walkways in Harvard Yard yesterday surrounded by the rare sight of snow-covered ground. A storm left more than 6 inches of snow in areas of northern New England but dropped only about 1 inch in the Boston area. Another storm arrives today, this one bringing mostly rain.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — Lady Gaga has launched a youth foundation by urging young people to ‘‘challenge meanness and cruelty. " The singer spoke Wednesday to a crowd of more than 1,100 students, faculty and invited guests at Harvard University. Oprah Winfrey, U.S. Health and Human Service Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and others joined her in kicking off the Born This Way Foundation. It's named after her 2011 hit song with lyrics that promote self empowerment.

CAMBRIDGE - Pop quiz question one: You have a metal plate with a hole in it. You microwave the plate. Does the hole grow, shrink, or stay the same? Question two: If Harvard University physicist Eric Mazur lectures a class of highly intelligent students on how atoms move away from each other in response to heat, then asks them question one, how many give the wrong answer? Most of them, it turns out, because one of the least effective ways to teach is to stand in an auditorium and deliver a monologue on facts, as Mazur did in explaining the motion of atoms.

CAMBRIDGE - Setting aside his dissertation on the environmental aspects of the Great Migration, Brian McCammack of Occupy Harvard considered tomorrow when the dozen or so tents will be taken down. The occupiers are calling it a transition rather than an abandonment and are vowing to continue the movement in other ways. They will leave in place the tarpaulin-covered geodesic dome that has been their common area and may attempt to maintain it 24 hours a day, hoping to stoke newdebate and discussion.

Harvard University's decision to close Harvard Yard to anyone without valid student ID, designed both to restrict and to protect the Occupy Harvard demonstrators inside the yard, turns that protest into something of a punch line. By restricting access to the yard, Harvard established an exclusive tent city that stands for the antithesis of protest solidarity: A movement that is supposed to highlight the inequities between the 99 percent and the 1 percent feels like it has more in common with the pampered and prosperous 1 percent.