Fifteen Questions: Reginald Dwayne Betts on Vulnerability, Collective Memory, and Freedom Reads

The visiting professor of English sat down with Fifteen Minutes to discuss poetry, prison literature, and collective memory.

Holding Space

No one tells you how to cope with a modern-day lynching.

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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.

Through Oral History, Students Listen to the Silences

“Memory changes because life experience has changed, but so does the language and ideas available for someone through which to understand that experience,” says Professor Katie Holmes. “Meaning is always individual and cultural, therefore, it is historically located.”

Up Close with Lee Smith

Smith’s enduring attachment to his time is representative of his broader artistic philosophy, one of introspection and intimacy. Part of that philosophy emerged from an encounter with the groundbreaking photojournalist Gordon Parks during his visit to the yearbook staff.

Most Likely to Be President: Arjun Akwei

But Arjun is no joke. Despite having a laid-back vibe, he speaks evenly, holds himself with strong posture, and maintains a piercing gaze.

Fifteen Questions: Naomi Oreskes on Climate Change Denial, Apolitical Scientists, and Her Favorite Rocks

The historian and her dog sat down with Fifteen Minutes to talk about disinformation, climate change, and rocks. “Generally people don’t act — especially if you’re asking people to change how they're living, how they’re behaving, how they’re thinking — if you just give them dry scientific information,” Oreskes says.

Goodbye, Beloved

To me, Sethe was the literary embodiment of womanhood — the queenly woman with blood on her hands and a tree scarred into her back. She was the personification of repression and “rememory,” the manifestation of a traumatic past into the present.

‘That Class Shut Harvard Down’: The Founding of African and African American Studies

In the late 1960s, Black students's advocacy led to the creation of what is now Harvard's African and African American Studies Department. What does the campaign to found Black studies have to teach people discontented with the university, society, and world they find themselves in?