There’s always something to do in the kitchen—something to chop, something to peel, something to stir. Last weekend, after tiring myself of reading, painting, and walking around my host family’s country home, I wandered into the kitchen, where my host dad’s sister was preparing dinner and the next day’s lunch. Eager for a task, I […]
The Institute of Politics JFK Forum recently led a conversation examining how democratic institutions—legislatures, political parties, and judicial systems—have been slow to adapt to a new global context marked by digital disruption and widespread public distrust in government. Hosted on April 4, the panel brought together moderator Steven Levitsky, director of the David Rockefeller Center […]
As part of a series with Harvard’s Center for International Development on global economic growth, the Institute of Politics’s John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum led a conversation on March 25 exploring the repercussions of dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development. The event featured three panelists discussing the future of U.S. foreign aid after the […]
I. You left early, like always. Same time you do every day. The buildings hadn’t lit yet. The sky was a pale gray, the kind that can’t commit to any particular kind of weather. You hadn’t checked the forecast before you left this morning, so you didn’t bring gloves. Your headphones were in before you […]
Despite my love for Eliot Dining Hall, I spent much of sophomore fall hopping between different Houses’ dining halls—not for camaraderie, but for answers to Stat 110 p-sets. Each week, hours of my life disappeared in crowded office hours, hovering around a teaching fellow in hopes of getting a single question answered about probability, Bayes’s […]
The Institute of Politics celebrated International Women’s Day with a conversation centered on the #StandWithHer movement, a global initiative inspired by the Academy Award-winning film “To Kill a Tiger.” Held on March 11, the event spotlighted stories of resilience, gender justice, and the role of solidarity in addressing gender-based violence. The panel brought together voices […]
Every few weeks, the Independent hears a quieter kind of silence: a writer backs out. “I started drafting something, but I’m not sure I want my name on it anymore.” I feel a pang of sadness with each of these withholdings. These hesitations do not always stem from controversial exposés or radical manifestos—often, they’re thoughtful […]
On Housing Day my sophomore year, as I walked into Eliot Dining Hall for an enhanced dinner, I was greeted with the smells of lobster ravioli and fresh apple crisp and the excited energy of new and old Eliotites mingling for the first time. Little did I know that this space in my new House […]
Hey chicas, Happy Spring to those who celebrate, and happy it’s-still-fifty-degrees to those already wearing jorts. In this week’s letter, I tell a rather sad tale—with an optimistic, dare I say even happy, ending. When I first came to Paris, I aspired to be a little more Jane Birkin and a little less Emily-in-Paris. While […]
I wandered too long,a stranger in my own life,watching laughter through glass,close enough to see, too far to touch. I lived at the edge of things, where streets stretched into silence, where each step away felt like exile, where the night ended not in sleep, but in the long breath before loneliness. It was waiting—always […]