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Michael Kielstra
About Michael Kielstra
Articles written by Michael Kielstra:
Lonesome Libraries
COVID-19 pushes Harvard’s libraries away from physical books, for a while.
COVID-19 pushes Harvard’s libraries away from physical books, for a while.
Sex and Christianity
Why is sex such a huge issue in the American church?
I do not claim to speak for the entire Christian church, nor even for all Protestants, but I think I am on pretty solid ground in saying that, all in all, Christianity is an anti-murder faith. It’s right there in Exodus 20: “You shall not murder.” While the debate about whether euthanasia and similar acts […]
CEEC’ing Arrangement
HGSU-UAW develops infrastructure to handle individual grievances
For the first months of its existence, the Harvard Graduate Student Union, HGSU-UAW, had a simple goal in mind. “What do we want?” members of the union members chanted, placards raised high around the John Harvard statue. “A contract! When do we want it? Now!” On July 1, 2020, “Now” finally arrived, and the new […]
Why Educate Generally?
A petition reveals a disagreement over the purpose of the Gen Ed program
Harvard’s General Education (Gen Ed) program’s website invites its students to “Explore new ideas. Expand your horizons. Engage with the world.” It instructs faculty that their proposals for course claims should be “geared toward non-specialists” and “not an introduction to a scholarly discipline.” In short, Gen Eds are orthogonal to the main thrust of anyone’s […]
Two Thousand to Sixty-Five
HGSU-UAW’s long road to a contract
How do you tell a tenured faculty chemist from a graduate student chemist? Ask her to pronounce “unionized.” On June 30, the Harvard Graduate Student Union, HGSU-UAW, voted 2026-65 to ratify their contract with Harvard. On July 1, it went into effect for one year, providing a raft of benefits ranging from pay raises and […]
Trust From Inside a Box
A Review of HRMDC’s Fall 2020 Show
Look left. Look right. Hold your head still. Don’t move, just look. Now left again. Pose. Freeze. Another will take over. Shift. Take over from another. Move once. Pose. Freeze. Stand. Stretch. Move in sync. You are not next to anyone. You will be next to someone. You are next to someone. And then you […]
Between Walls, Beyond Borders
Intramural sports in the remote era
Harvard is competitive. There are sixteen hundred students in your year, give or take, each of whom could potentially be a rival for a coveted internship, fellowship, or job. Every fall, the top five percent of students, based on last year’s GPA, are honored as John Harvard Scholars. Even the clubs are often either exclusive, […]
Old Man Yells at Cloud
Tech-bound Harvard students ought to remember the importance of preventing hacking
In 1897, Guglielmo Marconi obtained the first patent for a radio-based wireless telegraphy system. It was extremely basic, being able to do no more than transmit and receive Morse code, but that was enough to save about 700 people when the Titanic sank as early as 1912. Six years before that, in 1906, was the […]
The Saviour of Rhodes Island
This is what happens when you turn off advertising personalization on YouTube
Rhodes Island is in danger. You must understand this fact, or nothing I am about to say will make any sense at all. Rhodes Island—no, not Rhode Island—is in terrible danger, and only you and your team of “operators” can save it. Some of the operators also work for Penguin Logistics. This may or may […]