Summers and the Allston expansion. Latest stats on gender and higher education. And free books! Ladies and Gentlemen start your hard drives. (all quotes+links below the fold)
From today's Boston Globe:
As Harvard University searches for a new leader, questions loom over its last president's most ambitious project: turning America's oldest university into the nation's hub for life sciences.
During his 5-year tenure as the university's president, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers worked to put Harvard at the forefront of research on how the human cell works, a question the school's founders and the Massachusetts Bay Colony's Puritan leaders would have kept in the province of religion alone.
Nearly four centuries later, Harvard's plans -- which include building a new campus of buildings -- fit well with Massachusetts' desire to rejuvenate its economy by encouraging biotechnology firms to replace the region's long-fading manufacturing base.
"For Boston to survive (it) is by being on the cutting edge of new ideas and technology," said Harvard economics professor Edward Glaeser, who is also director of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, a research group. "And the vision Larry Summers has for Harvard is that it would play a major role in the life sciences and not sit this one out."
Some observers question whether the project, closely linked to the expansion of Harvard's Cambridge campus into Boston's Allston district across the Charles River, may lose steam after the energetic and blunt-spoken economist leaves the president's job in June. He has been invited to stay at Harvard as a professor.
Another interesting Globe article, Women gaining on men in advanced fields. From the article:
Women now earn the majority of diplomas in fields men used to dominate -- from biology to business -- and have caught up in pursuit of law, medicine and other advanced degrees.
Even with such enormous gains over the past 25 years, women are paid less than men in comparable jobs and lag in landing top positions on college campuses.
And finally free books for all! Again from the globe:
Project Gutenberg, a 35-year-old nonprofit based in Urbana, Ill., announced yesterday it is putting as many as 300,000 books online, where they will be available for free download. Called the World eBook Fair (worldbookfair.com), the program will last a month -- July 4 to Aug. 4 -- and will be repeated annually.
The catalog of available works will include fiction, nonfiction, and reference books, mostly those that are no longer protected by copyright. ``It will include the oldest books in the world, including every author you have heard of in your life, other than current ones," said Michael Hart, Project Gutenberg's founder. The fair also will offer classical music files, both scores and recordings, as well as films.
About 95 percent of the books are in the public domain and not subject to copyright law, Hart said. The copyright holders of the remaining 5 percent have given permission for use of their works. Copyright law generally protects a work for 70 years beyond the death of its creator.
For more info visiti Gutenberg.org.
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re: article on gender in higher ed - Women might earn the majority of diplomas in many fields, but they don't continue on to hold jobs that use those degrees, especially not in the sciences. Luckily it's normal and easy for a woman to go to college these days, but it's still difficult for women to have a career if the academy doesn't support them during graduate school and beyond. We still have lots of work to do.
2 Ls in Allston
Thanks. Corrections done. Where would I be without you, Pip?