Harvard University

Tue Oct 6 · 1pm

Book Talk: Superintendent as Civic Leader

Harvard University · Gutman Conference Center E1 & E2 · 6 Appian Way · Cambridge · Boston

Jennifer Perry Cheatham, Christina Grant and Ross Wiener discuss Superintendent as Civic Leader: Stewarding the Future of Public Education, the Harvard Education Press volume they edited, followed by a workshop. Cheatham, a senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, chairs the school’s Initiative on Superintendent as Civic Leader; Grant directs the Center for Education Policy Research, and Wiener is a vice president at the Aspen Institute.

Tue Oct 6 · 4pm

East of Eden: Adaptation and Representation

Harvard University · Farkas Hall · 12 Holyoke St. · Cambridge · Boston

Zoe Kazan, co-showrunner, writer and executive producer of Netflix's limited-series adaptation of Steinbeck's East of Eden, and cast member Hoon Lee ’94 join Ju Yon Kim, professor of English at Harvard and author of The Racial Mundane, for a conversation on reimagining American classics and Asian American representation on screen. Kazan's grandfather Elia Kazan directed the 1955 film of the novel.

Tue Oct 6 · 4:30pm

HGSE Askwith Education Forum | The Modern Superintendent

Harvard University · Harvard Graduate School of Education · Longfellow Hall · 13 Appian Way · Boston

Jennifer Cheatham, former superintendent of the Madison, Wisconsin, schools, moderates a conversation with three former superintendents, Russell Booker, Kyla Johnson-Trammell and Michael Matsuda, on the changing job of running a school district: building broad coalitions, partnering with families and students, navigating polarization and misinformation, and leading schools as democratic institutions. The forum launches HGSE's Initiative on Superintendent as Civic Leader.

Tue Oct 6 · 6pm

The Press and the President with Don Lemon & Chris Whipple

Harvard University · JFK Jr. Forum · Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School · 79 JFK St. · Cambridge · Boston

Don Lemon, who spent thirty years at CNN, NBC and MSNBC before leaving network television to build his own media company, joins Chris Whipple, a Fall 2026 resident fellow at the Institute of Politics, to discuss media access to the White House ahead of the midterm elections. Whipple is the author of The Gatekeepers, a history of White House chiefs of staff. In-person registration requires a Harvard email address.

Tue Oct 6 · 6:30pm

Perspectives on Performance: Peter Mills Weiss

Harvard University · Farkas Hall · Room 203 · 12 Holyoke St. · Cambridge · Boston

Peter Mills Weiss, a theatre maker who creates work with his collaborator Julia Mounsey, speaks for both of them under the title "authenticity as material," a discussion of how their theatre wrestles with cruelty, authenticity, deception, entertainment and power. Part of the Perspectives on Performance series from Harvard's Theater, Dance & Media program, supported by the Theodore Spencer Memorial Fund.

Oct 7, Nov 11, Dec 2 · 12:15pm

Lunchtime Recital: Carson Cooman and David von Behren

Harvard University · The Memorial Church of Harvard University · One Harvard Yard · Cambridge · Boston

Wed Oct 7 / Wed Nov 11 / Wed Dec 2 · 12:15pm

Carson Cooman, Composer in Residence at the Memorial Church and a Research Associate in Music at Harvard, shares a 45-minute midday recital with David von Behren, Assistant University Organist and Choirmaster. Cooman is an organist as well as a composer, with a catalogue running to well over a thousand works, and specialises in performing new music for the organ.

Wed Oct 7 · 1pm

The Parties, the Voters and the Road Ahead: A Discussion with Tim Miller, Host of The Bulwark Daily

Harvard University · Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School · 79 JFK St. · Cambridge · Boston

Tim Miller, host of The Bulwark Daily and a former Republican campaign and party communications strategist, talks with the Institute of Politics about the forces reshaping both parties ahead of the 2026 midterms, from shifting voter coalitions and candidate strategy to the tensions inside each movement. Miller was communications director for Jeb Bush's 2016 presidential campaign and wrote the 2022 memoir Why We Did It. Lunch is served.

Wed Oct 7 · 1:15pm

Muslim Transnationalism in Modern China: Debates on Hui Identity and Islamic Reform

Harvard University · CGIS-South 050 · 1730 Cambridge St. · Cambridge · Boston

Z. Hale Eroğlu, assistant professor of history at Boğaziçi University, discusses her book Muslim Transnationalism in Modern China, a portrait of “under recognized reformists who aimed to turn Muslim subjects into active Chinese citizens and revive ‘true’ Islam.” Drawing on Republican and early Communist-era journals, Chinese translations of Islamic sources, memoirs and travelogues, she traces how Hui intellectuals adapted currents from Egypt, Britain, India, Turkey and the Soviet Union.

Wed Oct 7 · 3pm

Democracy and Its Critics — Germany's 2026 Regional Elections: The AfD's Breakthrough Year?

Harvard University · Adolphus Busch Hall at Cabot Way · 27 Kirkland St. · Cambridge · Boston

A panel in the Center for European Studies' Democracy and Its Critics series on Germany's 2026 regional elections, whether this is the Alternative für Deutschland's breakthrough year, and what the results mean for Europe. Speaking are Cerstin Gammelin, spokesperson of the German Federal President; Anna Mayr, political correspondent at Die Zeit; and Fabio Ellger of the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. Daniel Ziblatt, co-author of How Democracies Die, chairs.

Wed Oct 7 · 4pm

PIER Public Seminar: Phone-Free Schools and Achievement Growth

Harvard University · Eliot Lyman Room · Longfellow Hall · 13 Appian Way · Cambridge · Boston

Douglas Staiger, an economist at Dartmouth College, presents a student-level analysis of how phone-free school policies relate to growth in achievement. The talk belongs to the Partnering in Education Research (PIER) public seminar series of Harvard's Center for Education Policy Research. Staiger's earlier research, much of it with the center's founder Thomas Kane, has examined teacher effectiveness and how schools measure it.

Wed Oct 7 · 5pm

Beyond the Battlefield: Maryna Er Gorbach's Klondlike and the remaking of war cinema

Harvard University · CGIS-Knafel Building | Room K-354 · 3rd Floor · 1737 Cambridge St. · Cambridge · Boston

Yuliya V. Ladygina opens the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute's three-part Petro Jacyk Seminar series arguing that cinema has become an expanded battlefield beyond combat. Through Maryna Er Gorbach's Klondike (2022), she shows how centring a pregnant heroine's embodied experience reveals unseen violence and resistance, widening the war genre and shaping international understanding of the conflict. The film is set in the Donbas in July 2014, as MH17 is shot down.

Wed Oct 7 – Sun Oct 11

Translational Longevity Summit

Harvard University · Harvard Enterprise Research Campus · 1 Milestone St. · Boston · Boston

Part of Boston Longevity Week, this five-day summit gathers clinicians, researchers, patients, advocates and innovators working where discovery meets deployment. Sessions cover translational science, clinical implementation, patient advocacy, lifestyle and behavior, and policy, with the aim of “translating cutting-edge research and scientific breakthroughs into real-world care.” Attendance can be booked for one day or several, and Harvard students, trainees, faculty and staff receive a 50% discount.

Harvard Students: $98.50

Thu Oct 8 · 12pm

The Next Generation Republican Operatives: A Panel Discussion with Doug Sosnik, Casey Contres, & Jessica Anderson

Harvard University · Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School · 79 JFK St. · Cambridge · Boston

Doug Sosnik of the Brunswick Group moderates a conversation with Casey Contres, chief of staff to Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri, and Jessica Anderson, president of the Sentinel Action Fund. They discuss the future of the Republican Party, shifting electoral coalitions, the priorities of conservative voters, and how emerging leaders approach campaigns and policymaking. The lunch talk is part of the Institute of Politics' Food for Thought series.

Thu Oct 8 · 1pm

Grief, loss, and trauma: A hidden toll

Harvard University · The Studio · 10th Floor · Kresge Building · Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health · Boston

Rachel Zimmerman, a reporter and the author of Us, After: A Memoir of Love and Suicide, joins researchers in trauma, grief and mental health to discuss the science and lived experience of loss and resilience. With her are Karestan Koenen, professor of psychiatric epidemiology at the Harvard Chan School; Matthew Nock, Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard; and Christy Denckla, an assistant professor at the Chan School.

Thu Oct 8 · 6pm

Global Competitiveness and the Path Forward with Senator Andy Kim

Harvard University · JFK Jr. Forum · Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School · 79 JFK St. · Cambridge · Boston

Senator Andy Kim, a New Jersey Democrat, talks about the United States, China and the state of global economic competition. Kim is ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee's subcommittee on national security and international trade and finance; before winning his seat in 2024 he served three terms in the House, and earlier worked on national security at the State Department and the National Security Council.

Fri Oct 9 · 9am

2026 Healthy Aging Symposium: From Cells to Society - The Science of Extending Healthspan

Harvard University · The Rotunda at Joseph B. Martin Conference Center · 77 Avenue Louis Pasteur · Boston · MA · Cambridge

The inaugural symposium of the Healthy Aging Initiative at the Harvard Chan School is a full day spanning biology, nutrition, environmental health, epidemiology and policy. Daniel Promislow of Tufts' USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging gives the keynote, and Frank Hu, Vadim Gladyshev, Wendy Garrett and Laura Kubzansky are among the Harvard speakers. Short talks from early-career researchers and an evening poster session close the day.

Fri Oct 9 · 12pm

The Politics of Belonging: Political Identity, Coalition Building, and the Future of American Politics ft. Whitley Yates

Harvard University · Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School · 79 JFK St. · Cambridge · Boston

Whitley Yates, a political strategist and public affairs executive who was director of diversity and engagement for the Indiana Republican Party, talks about how political identity, partisan affiliation and institutional trust interact. With both parties courting emerging voting blocs before the 2026 midterms, she looks at how a sense of belonging shapes coalitions, voter behavior and the realignments that could decide control of Congress.

Tue Oct 13 · 12pm

Canada Seminar

Harvard University · Bowie Vernon Room (K262) CGIS Knafel · 1737 Cambridge St. · Cambridge · Boston

Janis Thiessen, professor of history at the University of Winnipeg, takes as her starting point Sugar Farmers of Manitoba, a 1968 institutional history published by the Manitoba Beet Growers Association that gives inadvertent and disturbing insight into racism and settler colonialism in Canada. Her talk is a step toward a fuller history of sugar in the province. Mary Jane McCallum, Mackenzie King Visiting Professor of Canadian Studies at Harvard, chairs.

Tue Oct 13 · 12:20pm

Olmstead About-Face: Implications of the U.S. Department of Justice’s new stance on persons with disabilities’ right to community integration

Harvard University · Wasserstein Caspersen Center · Room 1015 · 18 Everett St. · Cambridge · Boston

In June a Justice Department legal memo effectively reversed the department's approach to defending disabled people's right to community integration under Olmstead v. L.C. (1999). Michael Ashley Stein of Harvard Law's Project on Disability, Steven J. Schwartz of the Center for Public Representation, Dianna Hu of the Boston Center for Independent Living and Alex Green of the Kennedy School discuss its practical effects and how the disability community can respond.

Wed Oct 14 · 6pm

Aristotle and AI: Insights from The Lyceum Project

Harvard University · Barker Center · 110 Thompson Room · Mahindra Humanities Center · 12 Quincy St. · Boston

A panel on The Lyceum Project, an annual gathering in Athens of philosophers, scientists, technologists and policymakers, considers what Aristotle's ethics and politics, with their attention to human flourishing, intelligence and virtue, can offer thinking about the development, governance and purposes of AI. Panelists are Vangelis Karkaletsis and Maria Dagioglou of Greece's Demokritos research center, Alexandra Mitsotaki of the World Human Forum, and Harvard's Sergio Imparato; Nicolas Prevelakis moderates.

Thu Oct 15 · 5:30pm

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Lecture at Harvard

Harvard University · Memorial Church · Harvard Yard · Cambridge · Boston

Paula A. Johnson, a physician-scientist and public health leader who became president of Wellesley College in 2016, gives Harvard's 2026 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Lecture, "Awakening the Dream Deferred," on "the character, courage, and civic purpose of higher education, and its role in sustaining democracy." Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard's president emerita, then moderates a conversation with her, and a community reception follows.

Fri Oct 16 · 4pm

America at 250 and Beyond: A Well-Informed Citizenry

Harvard University · JFK Jr. Forum · Institute of Politics · 79 JFK St. · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

Jill Lepore, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, moderates a panel on why a well-informed citizenry matters to the health of constitutional democracy. With her are David French, opinion columnist for the New York Times; Steve Inskeep of NPR's Morning Edition; and Jameel Jaffer, executive director of Columbia's Knight First Amendment Institute. It is the third event in the Institute of Politics' semiquincentennial series Consent of the Governed.

Wed Oct 21 · 12:15pm

Lunchtime Recital: Alessandro Bianchi

Harvard University · The Memorial Church of Harvard University · One Harvard Yard · Cambridge · Boston

Alessandro Bianchi, an Italian organist born in Como, plays a 45-minute midday recital. Bianchi studied at the Piacenza Conservatory, where he took diplomas in organ and organ composition with Luigi Toja, and attended masterclasses with Nicholas Danby and Arturo Sacchetti. He has been organist of the Basilica of St. Paul in Cantù and is artistic director of the musical association Amici dell'Organo di Cantù.

Wed Oct 21 · 6:30pm

Maria Claudia Clemente and Francesco Isidori, "The Architecture of Public Space"

Harvard University · Harvard Graduate School of Design · Piper Auditorium · Gund Hall · 48 Quincy St. · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

Maria Claudia Clemente and Francesco Isidori founded Labics, an architecture and urban-design practice, in Rome in 2002; its built work includes the MAST complex in Bologna. Drawing on their book The Architecture of Public Space (Park Books, 2023), they present recent Labics projects where the connection between architecture, the city and public space is most evident.

Thu Oct 22 · 5pm

Ian Marcus Corbin: To Arrive Where We Started

Harvard University · Countway Library · Floor 1 · Room 103 · 10 Shattuck St. · Boston

Ian Marcus Corbin discusses To Arrive Where We Started: Belonging in the Modern World, on friendship with oneself, family, community, nation and species. Corbin examines Native American, African and early American cultures that made their people feel at home, and contrasts them with contemporary America's “paranoid, self-protective culture of ownership.” Countway Library hosts the talk in its Longwood Author Series with Harvard Medical School's Center for Bioethics.

Thu Oct 22 · 5pm

Mala and Solomon Kamm Lecture in Ethics with C. Thi Nguyen

Harvard University · Thompson Room · Barker Center · 12 Quincy St · Cambridge · Boston

C. Thi Nguyen, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Utah and author of Games: Agency as Art, lectures on moral diversity: whether a good moral world needs different temperaments, the empathic and forgiving alongside “angry warriors for justice.” He weighs arguments from moral exploration and social coordination, and asks whether the unity of the virtues might belong to the community rather than the individual.

Mon Oct 26 · 4pm

Rama S. Mehta Lecture with Farida Shaheed

Harvard University · Knafel Center · 10 Garden St. · Cambridge · Boston

Farida Shaheed, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to education, delivers Harvard Radcliffe Institute's Rama S. Mehta Lecture, discussing her advocacy for that right and her proposal to treat academic freedom as an autonomous human right. A sociologist and lifelong activist, Shaheed is executive director of Shirkat Gah—Women's Resource Centre in Pakistan and has spent decades working for the rights of women and girls.

Thu Oct 29 – Fri Oct 30

Judicial Dialogues on Health and Climate Change

Harvard University · Harvard Law School · Milstein East C · Wasserstein Hall · 1585 Massachusetts Ave · Boston

The Petrie-Flom Center gathers judges, litigators and scholars from Africa, Europe and Latin America for a day on climate change, the right to health and the courts. The opening panel seats judges of the International Court of Justice, the Law of the Sea tribunal and the African, European and Inter-American human rights courts; later panels add current and former high-court justices from Colombia, Kenya, Germany and Mexico.

Fri Oct 30 · 1:15pm

Exploring the Expansion of Philosophical Colleges within and beyond Central Tibet

Harvard University · CGIS-South 050 · 1730 Cambridge St. · Cambridge · Boston

Gray Tuttle, Leila Hadley Luce Professor of Modern Tibetan Studies at Columbia University, traces how Tibetan Buddhist philosophical monastic colleges spread within and beyond Central Tibet, through networks of mother and branch monasteries tied by founding lamas, shared textbooks and residential houses. There were more than 430 such colleges in Tibetan areas, many others in Mongol regions and a few in Manchu-ruled China, at Beijing and Chengde.

Mon Nov 2 · 6:30pm

Pneuhaus “Building with Air”

Harvard University · Harvard Graduate School of Design · Piper Auditorium · Gund Hall · 48 Quincy St. · Boston

August Lehrecke, co-founder of Pneuhaus, traces how a joint thesis project on inflatables grew into an art, design and fabrication studio whose work packs down small and travels light, a business “closer to a traveling circus than a design studio.” He covers how commissioned projects feed the studio's own practice, and what a shift in air pressure can do, turning soft material rigid or letting light through.

Wed Nov 4 · 12:15pm

Lunchtime Recital: Will Cesta

Harvard University · The Memorial Church of Harvard University · One Harvard Yard · Cambridge · Boston

Pianist Will Cesta gives this free midday recital in the Memorial Church’s lunchtime series, a run of 45-minute concerts that this season is otherwise played largely on the church’s organs, most often by Carson Cooman, its composer in residence, and David von Behren, Assistant University Organist and Choirmaster.

Thu Nov 5 · 4:30pm

The Risks of Nuclear War in the Early 1980s

Harvard University · S050 CGIS South · 1730 Cambridge St. · Cambridge · Boston

Michael Dobbs discusses his new book The Six Minute War (Simon & Schuster), on US-Soviet tensions in Ronald Reagan’s first administration, when relations were worse than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Dobbs, a former Washington Post correspondent, also wrote One Minute to Midnight. Serhii Plokhii, Harvard’s professor of Ukrainian history, and Mark Kramer of the Davis Center’s Cold War Studies Project join him.

Thu Nov 5 · 6:30pm

Adrien Verschuere, “Recent Work”

Harvard University · Harvard Graduate School of Design · Piper Auditorium · Gund Hall · 48 Quincy St. · Cambridge · MA · Boston

Adrien Verschuere, this year's John Portman Visiting Chair at the GSD, presents recent projects from BAUKUNST, the office he founded in Brussels in 2010 and in Lausanne in 2017, with a focus on architecture's temporal dimension. The firm won the 2025 Brussels Architecture Award for Major Intervention and, with Pierre-Antoine Gatier, is a finalist to transform the Opéra Bastille. Verschuere teaches at the University of Stuttgart; the lecture is livestreamed.

Fri Nov 6 · 5pm

200 Years of Experience: Rethinking Real Estate’s Future American Real Estate Society Panel Discussion

Harvard University · Harvard Graduate School of Design · Piper Auditorium · Gund Hall · 48 Quincy St. · Boston

Scholars from the American Real Estate Society’s fall meeting at Harvard discuss real estate as an academic discipline and the forces reshaping the industry: AI and PropTech, higher-for-longer interest rates, a possible structural reset in offices, climate risk and insurance retreat, and whether power access is “the new zoning weapon.” The speakers are Norm Miller, Glenn R. Mueller, Michael J. Seiler, Karl-Werner Schulte and Richard Peiser.

Mon Nov 9 · 6:30pm

Dana Cuff, “Coming Home: Crisis, Fire, and Recovery”

Harvard University · Harvard Graduate School of Design · Piper Auditorium · Gund Hall · 48 Quincy St. · Boston

Dana Cuff, founder of UCLA’s cityLAB research and design center, discusses the lab’s work on rebuilding after the 2025 Eaton Fire in Altadena and on the Los Angeles housing crisis, with a focus on its community-led post-fire initiatives. Founded in 2006, cityLAB has developed low-cost, high-performance housing prototypes for infill sites from backyards to schoolyards, and partners with community groups in Westlake/MacArthur Park and Altadena.

Tue Nov 10 · 4pm

PIER Public Seminar: How Private Tutoring Centers Impact Student Achievement and Education Inequality

Harvard University · Eliot Lyman Room · Longfellow Hall · 13 Appian Way · Cambridge · Boston

Joshua Goodman of Boston University presents newly published research, written with Kitkin, on private tutoring chains such as Kumon and Sylvan, which have expanded rapidly in recent decades. The study asks which families use these centers, and how the opening of a district's first chain center affects district-wide math and reading scores and racial achievement gaps. Harvard's Center for Education Policy Research hosts the seminar.

Thu Nov 12 · 6:30pm

Infrastructure in a Time of Flux: Methods, Conditions, and Situations, Symposium

Harvard University · Harvard Graduate School of Design · Piper Auditorium · Gund Hall · 48 Quincy St. · Boston

Designers, architects, humanitarian workers and historians gather around Infrastructure in a Time of Flux: Methods, Conditions, and Situations, the Graduate School of Design exhibition curated by Rahul Mehrotra and Dan Borelli on how architecture, engineering and planning respond to environmental disruption, political instability, technological change and migration. They take up its three themes and its case study, the Kumbh Mela, which Mehrotra has mapped as an ephemeral megacity.

Sun Nov 15 · 4pm

Harvard University Choir Fall Concert

Harvard University · The Memorial Church of Harvard University · One Harvard Yard · Cambridge · Boston

The Harvard University Choir and Orchestra perform Benjamin Britten's St. Nicolas, with tenor Jonas Budris in the title role. Britten wrote the cantata in 1948, to a text by Eric Crozier, for the centenary of Lancing College; it tells the life and legends of the fourth-century bishop of Myra, and the score has the audience join the choir in two hymns. The concert is also streamed on YouTube.

Mon Nov 16 · 12pm

Governing Technology in an Age of Geopolitical Risk: Economic Security and Public Contestation in Japan

Harvard University · Bowie-Vernon Conference Room (K262) · CGIS Knafel Building · 1737 Cambridge St. · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

A talk on Japanese economic security policy and the public argument around it — how a state governs technology when geopolitics has turned it into a security question. Harvard's calendar carries the title, the date, the hour and the room at CGIS Knafel, and no abstract or speaker name, so the substance is not public in advance.

Thu Nov 19 · 4pm

Min Jin Lee: American Hagwon

Harvard University · Knafel Center · 10 Garden St. · Cambridge · Boston

Min Jin Lee returns to Harvard Radcliffe Institute to discuss her new novel, American Hagwon, which she worked on as the Catherine A. and Mary C. Gellert Fellow in 2018–2019. Lee is the author of Pachinko, a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award, and Free Food for Millionaires. She is joined in conversation by Jared Bowen, WGBH's executive arts editor and host of The Culture Show.

Thu Nov 19 · 4:30pm

Arrested Development: The US-Iran War in Historical Perspective

Harvard University · CGIS Knafel 262 · 1737 Cambridge St. · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

Nader Hashemi, director of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and associate professor of Middle East and Islamic politics at Georgetown’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, places the US-Iran war in historical perspective for the WCFIA/CMES Middle East Seminar. Hashemi wrote Islam, Secularism, and Liberal Democracy and co-edited, with Danny Postel, The People Reloaded, on Iran’s Green Movement, and Sectarianization.

Thu Nov 19 – Fri Nov 20

Current Developments in Mathematics 2026

Harvard University · Harvard University Science Center/Zimmer Hall · Hall A · 1 Oxford St. · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

The annual Current Developments in Mathematics conference, jointly hosted by Harvard and MIT, surveys the most recent developments across all areas of mathematics. The speakers posted so far are Roger Casals of UC Davis, Jennifer Morse of the University of Virginia and Naomi Sweeting of MIT. The organisers are Denis Auroux, Mark Kisin and Lauren Williams of Harvard and David Jerison and Nike Sun of MIT; registration is free.

Fri Nov 20 · 9am

BIDMC Cancer Center Symposium

Harvard University · Joseph B. Martin Conference Center · 77 Avenue Louis Pasteur · Boston · Boston

The 19th annual Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Cancer Center Symposium, under the theme "Reaching Towards the Future of Cancer," combines keynotes, an expert panel and research presentations on cancer therapeutics and computational and AI-enabled oncology, plus a poster session. Speakers include Nizar Bahlis, Giada Bianchi, Adrienne D. Cox, Vikram Deshpande, Gad Getz and Elizabeth Ann Mittendorf. Breakfast and lunch are served, and a cocktail hour begins at 4 PM.

Mon Nov 23 · 4:30pm

U.S. Policy Against Soviet-Bloc Trade: The Kennedy Administration After the Cuban Missile Crisis

Harvard University · S250 · CGIS South · 1730 Cambridge St. · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

James G. Hershberg, professor of history at George Washington University, on how the Kennedy administration, in the months after the Cuban Missile Crisis, tried to stop Brazil opening new trade ties with the Soviet bloc, threatening sanctions unless Brazil cancelled a deal to buy helicopters from Poland's Communist government. Mark Kramer, director of the Cold War Studies Project at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, moderates.

Mon Nov 23 · 6:30pm

Sylvia Lavin, "Architecture After Fire"

Harvard University · Harvard Graduate School of Design · Piper Auditorium · Gund Hall · 48 Quincy St. · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

Sylvia Lavin gives the Carl M. Sapers Ethics in Practice Lecture, arguing that American architectural modernism was inseparable from the forest, not for its timber but for its use of trees as information systems and as metaphor, and tracking the white pine through deforestation, wildfire and the Chicago school. Lavin, interim dean of Princeton's School of Architecture, is completing Arboreal Media and the Making of American Architecture.

Mon Nov 30 · 12pm

Japanese Dockworkers and the Politics of International Solidarity, 1950s-1960s

Harvard University · Bowie-Vernon Conference Room (K262) · CGIS Knafel Building · 1737 Cambridge St. · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

David Ambaras, professor of history at North Carolina State University, speaks on Japanese dockworkers and the politics of international solidarity in the 1950s and 1960s, at a lunchtime seminar of Harvard’s Program on U.S.-Japan Relations co-sponsored by the Toshiba International Foundation. Ambaras is the author of Bad Youth, on juvenile delinquency in modern Japan, and Japan’s Imperial Underworlds. Christina L. Davis, the program’s director, moderates.

Thu Dec 3 · 4pm

The Expertise Economy

Harvard University · Knafel Center · 10 Garden St. · Cambridge · MA (also on Zoom) · Cambridge

David H. Autor, head of MIT's economics department, gives the Kim and Judy Davis Dean's Lecture, arguing that what matters is not which jobs are “exposed” to technology but how technology changes the expertise a job requires. The lens accounts for four decades of rules-based computing and asks where AI will commoditize labour and where it will multiply expertise. Raffaella Sadun of Harvard Business School responds.

Thu Dec 3 · 4:30pm

The Struggle for Hegemony: the Unraveling Middle East Order Turkish foreign policy and Israel and Iran

Harvard University · CGIS Knafel 262 · 1737 Cambridge St. · Cambridge · Boston

Soli Özel, senior lecturer at Kadir Has University in Istanbul and a columnist for the daily Habertürk, examines Turkish foreign policy and its dealings with Israel and Iran as the Middle East order unravels. Ayşe Betül Çelik, professor of political science and international relations at Sabancı University and a visiting scholar in Harvard's Weatherhead Scholars Program, responds as discussant. The talk is part of the WCFIA/CMES Middle East Seminar.

Dec 13/15 · 5pm/7pm

The 117th Annual Christmas Carol Service

Harvard University · The Memorial Church of Harvard University · One Harvard Yard · Cambridge · Boston

Sun Dec 13 · 5pm / Tue Dec 15 · 7pm

The Harvard University Choir sings the 117th Annual Christmas Carol Service, which the Memorial Church describes as America’s oldest carol service. Admission is free, with no tickets issued; doors open an hour before each service. The Sunday afternoon service is broadcast live on WHRB 95.3 FM and the Tuesday evening service streamed on the church’s YouTube channel, with a collection afterwards for the Memorial Church Grants Committee.

Wed Jan 6 · 12:15pm

Lunchtime Recital: Carson Cooman

Harvard University · The Memorial Church of Harvard University · One Harvard Yard · Cambridge · Boston

Carson Cooman, the Memorial Church’s composer in residence and a research associate in music at Harvard, gives a free lunchtime organ recital. Cooman is a prolific American composer of choral, organ and instrumental music, and as an organist he specialises in the performance of contemporary repertoire.