The Scoop


House or Home? Recent Grads’ Strategies of Stickin’ Around

No more than four rooms in the dorms or in faculty deans’ residences of each house are earmarked every year for these people who love Harvard so much that they stay, simultaneously building community and operating in the shadows.

Resurrecting Film Photography in the Eliot House Basement

When Elmer and Social Studies lecturer Bonnie Talbert stepped into the position of Eliot’s faculty deans earlier this year, they wanted to bring a piece of themselves into House life. So Elmer decided to resurrect the abandoned Eliot darkroom and teach a House seminar on film photography.

Want to Become a Lorax? A New Course Rethinks Environmental Rights

In their new course, “The Rights of Nature,” visiting Law School professor James Salzman and American History and Harvard Law School professor Jill Lepore investigate a burgeoning American legal movement known as the Rights of Nature. The movement argues that granting legal personhood to wildlife and natural features could help stave off environmental destruction.

The Academic Policing of Academics on Policing

In 2022, professors Christopher Lewis and Adaner Usmani argued that to reduce violent crime, the U.S. needs to drastically shorten its prison sentences — and increase its police force by half a million officers. Their ideas soon become a flashpoint of online discourse.