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.
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.
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.
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.