Nation & World

The American middle class has been battered by the loss of well-paying jobs for the 70 percent of the workforce without a college degree and failed by would-be protectors in government and private institutions, said panelists in a Harvard forum on April 27.

Business can be an engine for solving social problems — especially poverty — said Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus in a talk at Harvard Business School.

The idea that law enforcement should work with citizens to help prevent, reduce, and solve crimes took flight through an unusual collaboration of academics and police leaders at Harvard Kennedy School.

The Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching (HILT) is supporting 47 proposals from the Harvard community. The efforts will receive a total of nearly $2 million in inaugural Hauser Fund grants.

Harvard University has chosen 10 teams as finalists in the President’s Challenge for social entrepreneurship. President Drew Faust created the challenge to encourage student teams from across the University to develop entrepreneurial solutions to five of the world’s most important social issues.

Henry Kissinger has spent more than half a century thinking about and shaping foreign policy. At Sanders Theatre on Wednesday, the former Secretary of State reflected on the “hobby that became my profession.”

During the Radcliffe Institute’s annual gender conference, scholars gathered to explore the role of women in forging democracies across the Arab world.

Andrew Delbanco, social critic and recipient of the National Humanities Award, warned in a speech that the shift of American higher education away from its liberal arts traditions undermines democratic society as universities push students into preprofessional pursuits.

Reported natural disasters are up dramatically since 1950, with more lives damaged by homelessness and injury, even as modern medical care and improved disaster response have reduced the number of lives lost, an authority on global disaster data says.

The inaugural event “One Harvard: Lectures that Last” featured short talks by a dozen speakers representing Harvard’s graduate and professional Schools. The session was designed to reveal the crosscurrents of innovation that can flow from discipline to discipline, and to expose students to fresh ideas.

Panelists in a recent Askwith Forum discussed lessons for educators in the ways NFL teams prepare for games and evaluate talent.

At Harvard to receive the Great Negotiator Award, James A. Baker III offered his insight and political perspective on his time as a senior government official for three U.S. presidents.

Geoffrey Canada received the Harvard Graduate School of Education Medal for Educational Impact. The School’s highest honor recognizes those who demonstrate an outstanding contribution to education. Canada discussed his time at the School of Education and his work with the Harlem Children’s Zone.

Laurence Golborne was Chile’s mining minister in 2010 when a mineshaft collapse catapulted him into the international spotlight. The subsequent 69-day operation that Golborne led to rescue 33 trapped miners made him famous.

Assurances of the safety of Japan’s nuclear industry lulled the government and the public into a false sense of security that was shattered a year ago when a massive earthquake and tsunami rocked the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the head of a panel that reviewed the disaster told a Harvard audience March 26.

Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe offers his analysis of this week’s hearings before the Supreme Court on mandatory coverage.

Professor Howard Gardner challenges aspiring lawyers at Harvard Law School to think about the ethics of their profession.

After more than a decade away, Professor Eric Maskin returned to the Economics Department this semester to a warm reception — and with a Nobel Prize in tow.

Trust in Congress is at an all-time low, but corrupt politicians aren’t to blame. For true reform, America must fix a broken system that relies on money from a fraction of the 1 percent, Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig argued on March 19.

Investigative reporting is an increasingly rare luxury for many news organizations. A Shorenstein Center roundtable featuring the finalists for the Goldsmith Awards in Political Journalism proved that with resources, hard work, and collaboration, the craft can thrive.

During a discussion at Harvard Graduate School of Education, Teach For America founder Wendy Kopp defended her initiative, which places recent college graduates as teachers in underserved communities for two years.

Harvard experts were among the lead organizers of a major effort to construct a multimedia archive of last year’s devastating earthquake and aftermath in Japan. The site goes live this week.

As a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Pei-Chia Lan is exploring how Taiwanese and Chinese immigrants negotiate cultural differences in child rearing and how they parent transnationally.

A Harvard and MIT symposium seeks to understand and address propaganda and misinformation in the new media ecosystem.

With its increasingly popular website called Journalist’s Resource, the Shorenstein Center is putting academia’s insights at reporters’ fingertips, and making a broader case for knowledge-based reporting.

The Strategic Data Project at the Graduate School of Education aims to develop a new corps of data analysts who can help to lead reform of the nation’s public school systems.

Brazilian urban specialist Edgard Gouveia Jr., who has won international attention for his approach to grassroots development through game play, demonstrates his techniques to Harvard students.

Political journalists Mark Halperin ’87 and John Heilemann, M.P.A. ’90, returned to Harvard Thursday night to screen and discuss the new HBO Films adaptation of their best-seller “Game Change,” showing that the drama of Sarah Palin’s 2008 vice presidential nomination can still draw an enthusiastic crowd.

A Harvard law professor, former judge, and ardent feminist points to the cultural impediments that have stalled feminism’s quest for an equal workplace.

Acclaimed documentary filmmaker Helen Whitney opens a three-day series of William Belden Noble lectures titled “Spiritual Landscapes: A Life in Film.” Her work draws out examples of how faith can foster not only inner peace, but also public turmoil.