8William Fash, Harvard’s Bowditch Professor of Central American and Mexican Archaeology and Ethnology, examines a polychrome plaster relief of the name of the founding king of the Copán dynasty, K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo,’ on a temple (nicknamed “Margarita” by the archaeologists) that is located deep inside a series of tunnels burrowing through the main ruins’ acropolis. This is the sixth in a series of stories about Harvard’s engagement in Latin America.COPÁN, Honduras — “We have to get you there for the ‘magic hour,’ ” said Bill Fash, peering through the spidery crack on the windshield of his old Ford pickup as he drove two visitors to the main Maya ruins in Copán.The enchanted time of day at the majestic UNESCO World Heritage site comes at dusk, when the sun stretches its fingers across the massive Maya monuments and the lush valley floor. Encircled by mountains, the ruins contain an ancient world of buried secrets that members of the Harvard community and residents of Copán have been uncovering for decades.As the long shadows receded into dusk, these primeval secrets seemed to hide once more. But the diligent industry of Fash, his wife and colleague Barbara, Harvard students, and a growing cohort of co-workers has ensured that unraveling the site’s riddles will continue.Since 1970, Bill and Barbara have been toiling in Copán to restore, preserve, and protect the Maya culture and history for future generations. Their labors include a massive rescue operation for the site’s acropolis; creating a museum to house some of the site’s most precious sculptures, thereby protecting them from looters and weather; and safeguarding the Hieroglyphic Stairway, the longest hieroglyph (featuring stylized symbolic writing) in the Americas.For the past seven years, the Fashes and their team have focused on their latest finding, Rastrojón, a rocky outcrop at the edge of the valley, away from the main ruins. Their efforts have slowly revealed the intricate imagery on countless sculptures that have brought to light the site’s ancient name, “Precious Puma Hill.”Exposing a buried treasureIn the spring of 2007, Bill Fash, the Charles P. Bowditch Professor of Central American and Mexican Archaeology and Ethnology in Harvard’s Department of Anthropology, walked visitors through the as-yet-undisturbed space, speculating about what might lie beneath several large, earth-covered mounds. Last month, he gazed out at a massive stretch of tumbled rock at the same site, now covered by a long, yellow-and-gray tarp. The exposed building stones represent endless hours of excavation to unearth Structure 10, which Fash and his colleagues believe was a palace that likely housed nobility and the elite warriors who protected them. Built above three underground faults, the building, said Fash, “collapsed in spectacular fashion” in antiquity.Behind him loomed a recreated wall of the structure’s façade, on which was pictured the head of ruler 12. He is also known as K’ahk’ Uti’ Witz’ K’awil, or Fire at the Edge of the Lightning God’s Waterfall, shown emerging from the mouth of a giant puma. The revered and powerful Maya ancestor was the longest-lived ruler in the city’s history, leading the kingdom in Copán from 628 to 695 A.D. Much of the site’s iconography makes direct reference to this fearsome warrior.And while the Maya are known for a host of ancient rituals, on this same August day, a more familiar ritual was taking place. The Fashes stood at a temporary dais along with several distinguished visitors, including the Honduran vice president and the U.S. ambassador to the country. They were on hand to celebrate the site’s official opening to the public. They commemorated the opening and highlighted the ongoing collaboration between the local community and Harvard to protect and preserve Maya culture and history.And that’s where another group of honored guests came in. A number of men and women had gathered quietly halfway up the hill, sitting on the dry ground. They wore jeans and olive shirts that read Proyecto Arqueológico Rastrojón Copan (PARACOPÁN). Some had straw cowboy hats to shield themselves from the sun. Receiving a summons from the group below, they scrambled to their feet and quickly formed a line in front of the vice president, who presented them with certificates acknowledging their work with the project and their expertise in a variety of specialized tasks.That part of the ceremony was a surprise, organized in secret by the Fashes. Many of the workers stared at their “diplomas” sheathed in manila folders, smiling almost as if in disbelief. They had performed some of the most important work in the area in recent years, the result of PARACOPÁN, a program that inspires and trains the locals to become the guardians of their own heritage.Training the local communityIn his Cambridge office in the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology a few weeks before the ceremony, Bill Fash talked about the importance of the local training program. While community members have always been involved in the projects, he and Barbara, who is director of Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions at the Peabody, slowly realized that the lack of a stable research program functioning at all times in Copán meant that many of “the best people that we had trained in years gone by had migrated into other kinds of work.”That brain drain became a top concern for the Harvard researchers, whose active engagement in Copán is likely to decrease eventually. So with several Honduran partners, they developed a program of training, conservation, rescue archaeology, and community engagement.Rastrojón seemed the perfect test site for a better program. There the Fashes have trained 30 local young people and dozens of undergraduates and graduate students working with the Harvard Field School in Maya archaeology, teaching them archaeological and conservation methods and theories.One of the Fashes’ earliest trainees was Jorge Ramos, now co-director of the site at Rastrojón. His voice hoarse from the many interviews he’d conducted with Honduran radio and TV outlets throughout the day, Ramos, who was born and still lives in Copán, explained the importance of the site’s sculptures to a persistent questioner. By then, the crowd had retreated up the hill to sip wine and munch on chicken tamales in the shade of a white tent.The site’s images — a serpent, butterflies, and the impressive face of the open-jawed puma — all relate to the culture of war, explained Ramos, a slender man whose crop of curly black hair had begun to stick to his head from the heat. He pointed to the carvings of the snake and flittering insects on the palace’s recreated wall. Turning to the valley, Ramos pointed out a series of stelae, tall, stone monuments lined in a row, barely visible in the distance at the entrance to the valley, where warriors on guard likely lit fires as part of a warning system to alert Rastrojón to advancing friends or foes.A cloud of butterflies began to swirl. Buffeted by the breeze, they created a mild frenzy of soft yellow, white, and occasional black markings, with a flash of an aqua-blue wing. Their appearance was Ramos’ cue to explain that in Maya lore, the insects symbolized death. “When a warrior died [in battle], he would become a butterfly,” and feed on flowers and nectar for all eternity.This skilled archaeologist, who with the support of the Fashes and other colleagues obtained his Ph.D. in archaeology from the University of California, Riverside, in 2006, almost took a very different path in life. He first showed up in Copán in 1989, hoping to help manage the accounting books for a project at the main ruins (he had studied finance in high school). But he learned the job had been filled. Disappointed, he bumped into Bill Fash on his way out. Fash told him there were many parts of the project he could work on if he was willing to learn.“He put me on the path,” said Ramos with a smile.Safeguarding a cultural heritage At the site the following day, a smiling Harvard graduate watched as visitors began to filter through the ruins on their first official day open to the public.During her College days, Kate Brunson ’08 worked closely with Barbara Fash, helping to preserve plaster casts of Maya and Aztec monuments made in the field in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and housed at the Peabody Museum. Before heading to graduate school in archaeology, Brunson worked at the Harvard Field School in Copán, helping to draw detailed maps of the stone sculptures of Rastrojón’s Structure 10. Grateful to Harvard and the Fashes, Brunson also said collaborating with local Maya experts had been a gift.“It’s really fun to be able to see how they are now really the experts in archaeology here at Copán,” she saidNearby was one of those experts, Jose Carlos Gonzalez, 25, wearing a T-shirt bearing an image of the Rosalila Temple, the sixth-century Copán masterpiece, a replica of which dominates the Copán Sculpture Museum.Gonzalez described how he started at the site in 2010, helping Barbara Fash to paint the replica temple in its bold shades of red, white, green, and yellow. A talented artist, he was later trained to capture images of the ruins on paper, and ultimately began carefully fitting pieces of Maya sculpture back together.“I really love that … it’s like a big, big puzzle. The difference with a puzzle is that you have a picture that you are following. You have a guide. Here we have nothing.”Gonzalez said that while he was always interested in the ruins, he thought at first the local population didn’t appreciate the conservation efforts. But his own involvement and that of others has altered his view.“I am part of something the world is going to see,” he said, “and it’s wonderful.”Later in the day, at the nearby conservation lab, Gonzalez gently brushed sand and dust from a slowly emerging façade of Structure 10 that was being pieced together, first in a giant outdoor sandbox, and later on the ground floor of the sculpture museum. The meticulous process involves mixing and matching pieces, to pair the perfect curve of one with the exact indent of another.“I always joke that archaeologists are frustrated kids that did get enough time in the sandbox,” said Bill Fash, noting that arranging works there gives researchers the chance to rearrange pieces to make sure they have the best fit before adding mortar to hold them together.Touring the lab’s vaulted sculpture storage area, the Fashes discussed some of the thousands of relics that they and their team have unearthed, cataloged, and preserved. “Let’s just see what our latest number here is,” said Bill Fash, grabbing for a Tyvek label on a rounded piece of light-brown sculpture that once served as an incense burner. “Thirty-two thousand fragments of sculpture, and there’s still quite a ways to go.”In his own room sat the pieced-together head of Ruler 12. “A beard showed reverence to people in advance years,” said Barbara, an expert on Maya sculpture, explaining the pointed section of stone carved to look like hair on the sculpture’s chin. “They are showing that he was able to live to a ripe old age. But at the same time, his features are those of a young person. It’s a funny, idealized portrait — our great and long-lived ruler — with no wrinkles.”Tunneling into the pastIf Rastrojón sits at one of the highest points in the Copán kingdom, the tomb of its founder sits at its lowest. The Maya carefully constructed their buildings atop one another. As such, a multilayered, soaring pyramid in the main ruins represents many generations of Maya rulers and the temples built in their honor. And there’s nothing archaeologists like more than doing a little digging into the past to get to where a civilization began.A series of tunnels dug deep into the base of the acropolis has helped researchers to travel back in time to the days of the founder, K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’. On this day, Bill Fash was keen to show Brunson and one of his new Ph.D. students, Alexis Hartford, part of this underground labyrinth and the riches buried within.The trek through the tunnels is instantly disorienting. In a few short steps, the familiar screeching of macaws outside is silenced. Voices are muted and muffled by the narrowing space. Light is overcome by blackness.“This is kind of fun here because they are keeping the lighting to a minimum,” said Fash, as he led a small group further into the darkness. “I am real glad I know where I am going because there is a deep hole at the end of this tunnel. Whatever you do, don’t go straight here. Take a hard left at this point, or you won’t live to tell the story,” he instructed his followers, who responded with nervous laughter.Suddenly the space opened slightly to reveal a massive stone carving, a plaster relief in red and green bearing the name of K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’. The imagery is carved into the side of a temple — nicknamed “Margarita” by the archaeologists – that was built by the founder’s son and successor around the year 450 and is located directly atop the founder’s own funerary temple.Further on, Fash, his face glistening with sweat, his linen shirt soaked through, curled himself into a ball at the end of a tunnel. Sitting in the red dirt, he directed Hartford to crawl on her hands and knees down an adjacent 10-foot stretch and drop into a hollowed-out space so she could peer into the tomb of the founder.Hartford was game and used the flash on her camera to illuminate the space.“So this is ground zero,” said Fash. “The seat of power, literally of the dynasty.”Later, back in the light of day, Hartford remarked on the tunnel trek. “It’s just amazing to see it in person,” she said. “Maybe I’ll find something like that someday. It gives me hope.” 9The replica of the sixth-century A.D. Copán masterpiece the “Rosalilia” temple, painted in red, yellow, green and white, is the centerpiece of the Copán Sculpture Museum. 4Jose Carlos Gonzalez, a member of the archaeological rescue and conservation team, draws a digital map of a structure at Rastrojón. 1A sculpture of the head of the Maya ruler 12, K’ahk’ Uit’ Ha’ K’awiil, recovered at Rastrojón in the Copán Valley, Honduras. Researchers believe the site was a residential palace and military outpost. 5Rastrojón site director Jorge Ramos talks visitors through the archaeological recovery process. “Based on the tectonic and sculptural features,” said Ramos, “we believe it was some kind of residential palace.” 6Late afternoon shadows frame the east court of the Copán acropolis. 2Excavations of Rastrojón’s structure 4 indicate the site began to be occupied around the year 300. 7A macaw nibbles on a wooden fence as a spider casts its web at Copán’s main ruins. 3Members of the field team Proyecto Arqueológico Rastrojón Copán (PARACOPAN), composed of local Copán residents and Harvard students, listen to opening remarks during the site’s official unveiling in August. 10Harvard Ph.D. candidate Alexis Hartford (right) and Harvard graduate Katherine Brunson ’08 examine pottery excavated in Copán in the 1930s. read more
The Harvard University Native American Program in conjunction with the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology will host a visit and public talk by Kevin Gover (Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma), director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian.Gover is a former professor of law at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. He also served as the assistant secretary for Indian affairs in the U.S. Department of the Interior from 1997 to 2000. During his years as a practicing attorney he focused on federal Indian law, environmental and administrative law, commercial transactions, and legislative affairs. He was most recently highlighted in the Washington Post Magazine’s Lifestyle section on September 18, 2013.His public talk, “Changing the Narrative: American Indians and American Cultural Myth,” will take place on Wednesday, October 9, at 6 p.m. in the Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street. A reception will follow in the Wiyohpiyata Exhibit at the Peabody Museum, 11 Divinity Avenue.The Harvard University Native American Program, an interfaculty initiative under the Office of the President and Provost, brings together students, faculty and scholars for the purpose of advancing the well being of Indigenous peoples through self-determination, academic achievement, and community service. read more
The value of a clear understanding of your country’s objectives and the power of personal relationships — along with the wisdom of not drinking too much lemonade — were among the insights former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright shared with a Harvard audience Thursday.“Personal relationships do ease things a lot,” said Albright, who served as secretary of state during President Bill Clinton’s second term from 1997 to 2001. “But you can’t let that personal relationship get in the way.”Albright was a guest of the American Secretaries of State Project, a joint effort by the Harvard Kennedy School’s (HKS) Future of Diplomacy Project and the Program on Negotiation. She was joined on stage by the project’s three faculty directors: Nicholas Burns, professor of the practice of diplomacy and international politics at HKS; Robert Mnookin, Samuel Williston Professor of Law at Harvard Law School (HLS); and James Sebenius, Gordon Donaldson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School (HBS). The three faculty members co-teach the “Great Negotiators, Effective Diplomacy, and Intractable Conflicts” class, and their students were in the audience and able to press Albright further on key points.While introducing the panel, HBS Dean Nitin Nohria said the project is a perfect example of the One Harvard philosophy, aimed at bringing together the University’s various Schools and communities.The program at HBS’s Spangler Center, which ran for more than three hours, focused on Albright’s negotiations around key foreign policy issues, including the conflicts in the Balkans, relationships with Russia and China, attempts to reach a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, and efforts to secure a deal with North Korea over its nuclear weapons program.Throughout, Albright returned to the importance of establishing personal relationships with her counterparts and using personal elements carefully to ease the heavy mechanisms of international diplomacy. To attain an objective, she said, it was indispensable to have a clear understanding of what the other side wanted out of negotiations. But it was also invaluable to understand the person on the other side of the table. “You don’t have to like everybody, but you have to learn what makes them tick,” she said.She talked about how her relationship with Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov was helped by a duet they performed at an ASEAN diplomatic conference. But as the first female U.S. secretary of state, Albright said she felt that sometimes men, such as Serbian and Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milošević, believed they could establish that relationship through charm alone. It was not a good tactic. “I ultimately came to be known as not being a pushover,” she said dryly.Albright talked about the efforts made during her tenure to manage the United States’ relationship with Russia, and the great efforts made to respect that nation as it dealt with the consequences of its declining power in the ’90s.The United States made a large mistake by saying it had won the Cold War, implicitly painting the Russians as the losers, Albright reflected. “They felt like Bangladesh with missiles,” Albright said, repeating a striking phrase she once heard uttered by a Russian man interviewed not long after the breakup of the Soviet Union. The world is, in a way, now dealing with the consequences of that, she said.Albright also revisited negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. She mourned the lack of political will by those countries’ leaders to create the conditions for a lasting peace, which many observers thought was almost reached at the Camp David talks in 2000. But she also regaled the audience with tales of moody negotiators, holed up in rooms and asking for sightseeing trips to Civil War sights.The oddness of the negotiations was summed up by her experience with former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad. She had been warned by her predecessors of Assad’s use of “bladder diplomacy.” He would constantly offer tea and lemonade during negotiations, hoping the other side would call for a bathroom break and therefore lose face. Albright politely declined any beverage, she said, and won that small battle.Albright was the fourth U.S. secretary of state to speak to the project, after Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, and James Baker III. Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Hillary Clinton have also committed to participate.“The most important thing we can do as academics is to be rigorous in learning the lessons and then trying to make sense of those lessons for students and future generations,” Burns said. “I think that’s the great value of this project.” read more
We have only one example of a planet with life: Earth. But within the next generation, it should become possible to detect signs of life on planets orbiting distant stars. If we find alien life, new questions will arise. For example, did that life arise spontaneously? Or could it have spread from elsewhere? If life crossed the vast gulf of interstellar space long ago, how would we tell?New research by Harvard astrophysicists shows that if life can travel between the stars (a process called panspermia), it would spread in a characteristic pattern that we could potentially identify. The research is outlined in a paper that was recently published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.“In our theory, clusters of life form, grow, and overlap like bubbles in a pot of boiling water,” says lead author Henry Lin of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).There are two basic ways for life to spread beyond its host star. The first would be via natural processes such as gravitational slingshotting of asteroids or comets. The second would be for intelligent life to deliberately travel outward. The paper does not deal with how panspermia occurs. It simply asks: If it does occur, could we detect it? In principle, the answer is yes. Astrophysicist shares excitement, expectations for flyby findings Related Pluto in detail The model assumes that seeds from one living planet spread outward in all directions. If a seed reaches a habitable planet orbiting a neighboring star, it can take root. Over time, the result of this process would be a series of life-bearing oases dotting the galactic landscape.“Life could spread from host star to host star in a pattern similar to the outbreak of an epidemic. In a sense, the Milky Way galaxy would become infected with pockets of life,” explains CfA co-author Avi Loeb.If we detect signs of life in the atmospheres of alien worlds, the next step will be to look for a pattern. For example, in an ideal case where the Earth is on the edge of a “bubble” of life, all the nearby life-hosting worlds we find will be in one half of the sky, while the other half will be barren.Lin and Loeb caution that a pattern will be discernible only if life spreads somewhat rapidly. Since stars in the Milky Way drift relative to each other, stars that are neighbors now won’t be neighbors in a few million years. In other words, stellar drift would smear out the bubbles. read more
Students with less than 20 minutes to eat school lunches consume significantly less of their entrées, milk, and vegetables than those who aren’t as rushed, according to a new study from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.The study appeared online today in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.“Many children, especially those from low-income families, rely on school meals for up to half their daily energy intake, so it is essential that we give students a sufficient amount of time to eat their lunches,” said Juliana Cohen, adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Nutrition at Harvard Chan School, assistant professor in the Department of Health Sciences at Merrimack College, and lead author of the study.“Every school day the National School Lunch Program helps to feed over 30 million children in 100,000 schools across the U.S., yet little research has been done in this field,” said Eric Rimm, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard Chan School and the study’s senior author.While recent federal guidelines enhanced the nutritional quality of school lunches, there are no standards regarding lunch period length. Many students have lunch periods that are 20 minutes or less, which can be an insufficient amount of time to eat, according to the authors.The researchers wanted to examine the effect of lunch period length on students’ food choices and intake. They looked at 1,001 students in six elementary and middle schools, with lunch periods ranging from 20 to 30 minutes, in a low-income urban school district in Massachusetts, as part of the Modifying Eating and Lifestyles at School (MEALS) study, a collaboration between Project Bread and Harvard Chan School. They analyzed the students’ food selection and consumption by monitoring what was left on their plates at the end of the lunch period.The researchers found that students with less than 20 minutes to eat lunch consumed 13 percent less of their entrées, 12 percent less of their vegetables, and 10 percent less of their milk than students who had at least 25 minutes to eat. While there were no notable differences between the groups in terms of entrée, milk, or vegetable selections, those with less time to eat were significantly less likely to select a fruit (44 percent versus 57 percent). Also, there was more food waste among groups with less time to eat.Waiting in serving lines or arriving late to lunch sometimes left children in the study with as little as 10 minutes to actually sit and eat. The researchers acknowledged that while not all schools may be able to lengthen their lunch periods, they could develop strategies to move kids more quickly through lunch lines, such as by adding more serving lines or setting up automated checkout systems.“We were surprised by some of the results because I expected that with less time children may quickly eat their entrée and drink their milk but throw away all of their fruits and vegetables,” said Rimm. “Not so — we found they got a start on everything, but couldn’t come close to finishing with less time to eat.”Jaquelyn Jahn, a master’s student in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Harvard Chan School, was a co-author.The study was funded by a grant from Project Bread and Arbella Insurance. Cohen was supported by the Nutritional Epidemiology of Cancer Education and Career Development Program. read more
Before and after Jean de Brunhoff’s final, hand-colored proof illustrating the letter T. Courtesy of Houghton Library Jean de Brunhoff’s original pen-and-ink drawing illustrating the letter T. Each page of “ABC de Babar” includes animals and objects representing the letters of the alphabet. Courtesy of Houghton Library Babar, the beloved elephant of children’s literature known as much for his ability to overcome life’s challenges as for his snazzy, green three-piece suit and yellow crown, has returned to Harvard.The popular pachyderm arrived this week as the focus of a new exhibition at Houghton Library titled in similar fashion to the iconic picture books. Called “Babar Comes to Houghton,” the display, which runs through Aug. 31, celebrates the donation of archival work of his creator, Jean de Brunhoff, the French writer and artist who brought him to life in 1931.“Everybody likes elephants,” said Laurent de Brunhoff, Jean’s son, who kept expanding the world of Babar after his father died in 1937. “Children responded to this loving, encouraging, peaceful family.”Laurent, who is now 90 and lives in Key West, Fla., visited Houghton along with his wife, Phyllis Rose, a 1964 Radcliffe College graduate who earned her Ph.D. in English literature. Author of “Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages,” among other books, Rose described her time at Harvard as blissful, and said she still has dreams about riding her bike from the Radcliffe Quad to Harvard Yard.In honor of the show, the library commissioned an original watercolor from de Brunhoff showing Babar, “ABC de Babar” in hand, walking into Houghton. Courtesy of Houghton Library“It was like I found Celesteville,” said Rose, referring to the imaginary capital of Babar’s kingdom.This wasn’t de Brunhoff’s first trip to Harvard. In the mid-1960s, he visited on his first trip to the United States during a stopover arranged by his publisher at Random House, Robert Bernstein ’44. De Brunhoff put his adventures into watercolor on several pages of “Babar Comes to America” (1966) with highlights that included Babar’s taking in the Harvard-Yale game, getting an honorary degree, and relaxing at the Harvard Lampoon.“I go through life with Babar,” said de Brunhoff. “When something happens to me, I want it to happen to Babar, too. I get enthusiastic about things, and I want Babar to get enthusiastic, too.”More recent literary adventures have taken the elephant to the Olympics (“Babar’s Celesteville Games”) and the tropics (“Babar on Paradise Island”), but the Houghton exhibition features exclusively the creation of “ABC de Babar” (“Babar’s ABC”) from Jean’s early sketches to his masterful final hand-colored proofs.“He had amazing sureness of drawing,” said Hope Mayo, Philip Hofer Curator of Printing and Graphic Arts, standing before a display case filled with rough penciled ideas for the “A” page, including an ane (donkey), arrosoir (watering can), and araignee (spider). “It’s remarkable how precise the early sketches are.” Though the library is still searching for a first French edition of the book, Mayo said the archival donation gives Houghton a rare look at the entire creative process, particularly the preparatory materials involved in the writing and design.“It documents a complete production of a children’s book in the 20th century,” she said. “It’s very talented.”Before de Brunhoff and his wife visited Houghton last week, he reflected on taking over his father’s work in 1946.“My mother was a widow with three boys, and life was very hard. When the war [World War II] was over and we had time to take stock of the situation, I missed my father. I had been trained as an artist, and just found myself drawing Babar. For me it was soothing and wonderful to be continuing what my father did,” he said.In honor of the show, the library commissioned an original watercolor from de Brunhoff through the Mary Ryan Gallery in New York City. It shows Babar, “ABC de Babar” in hand, walking into Houghton. Rose, who first met de Brunhoff while in Paris researching her book “Jazz Cleopatra,” a biography of Josephine Baker, said she collaborates with de Brunhoff, writing storylines to pair with his illustrations.“We’re so happy to have this book at Houghton because it belongs to the history of graphic design and book publishing,” she said. “Like his father, Laurent is a painter. I hope that people recognize it as beautiful artwork.” read more
Sometimes, he added, simply letting people know that whether they voted is a matter of public record does the trick. “Pure juvenile peer pressure sends turnout through the roof,” he said.Currently, the campaign is targeting 2 million environmentalists in 12 states who have registered but never voted. Although Stinnett warns that there are many factors influencing these numbers and that they are not predictive, these new voters appear to be turning out. Already, 73,423 of these self-identified environmental voters have voted early, he said. In Pennsylvania, where 4.7 percent of all registered voters have already cast ballots, 10 percent of Stinnett’s target group have. In Florida, 11.9 percent of those registered have, compared to 19.4 percent of the target group, and in North Carolina, where 6.8 percent have voted, 15.2 percent of environmentalists have. Think different, act more These results are not only encouraging, they are self-sustaining, he says. Many first-time voters are pleasantly surprised to discover how easy the process is. Also, once registered voters are viewed — through their public records — as likely voters, other political campaigns focus on them. “Once we get someone to vote, then everybody else starts piling in on them, making sure they vote,” said Stinnett. Best of all, he noted, “politicians start responding to the issues that they care about.”“In a very deep sense, most Americans are cynical about politics,” said Stinnett. His goal, he says, is to “take your cynicism one step further: it’s not that your vote doesn’t matter, it’s that your vote is the only thing that matters. It’s so crucially important to be a voter,” he concluded.“Remember,” Seth summed up Stinnett’s message, “real environmentalists vote.” Seminar looks at expected wave of 18- to 29-year-olds and their policy priorities Will young voters decide the election? Getting out the vote Enough Americans say they prioritize the environment to have a monumental effect on policy. The problem is they just don’t vote. Tackling that challenge — from identifying to motivating environmental voters — was the focus of “Mobilizing the Environmental Vote: Report from the Front Lines,” an online discussion with Nathaniel Stinnett, founder and executive director of the Environmental Voter Project.Moderator Sanjay Seth, M.P.A./M.U.P. ’19, co-president of Harvard Alumni for Climate and the Environment, introduced Stinnett, who opened with some eye-popping facts. The number of registered voters who say climate and the environment is their top priority is rising (from 2 percent in 2016 to 7 percent in 2018). They are, however, failing spectacularly at making themselves heard at the polls. Stinnett said that 10 million registered voters who named the environment as their top priority did not vote in the 2016 election.“Environmentalists are awful voters,” said Stinnett during Wednesday’s discussion, which was sponsored by the Ash Center, Institute of Politics, Harvard Alumni for Climate and the Environment, and the Office for Sustainability.While the reasons to vote should be obvious, the cost of failing to do so may be less clear. To illustrate, Stinnett drew a comparison between environmental voters and those who support the NRA, noting that gun rights advocates have political clout, while environmentalists don’t. “There are four times as many of us as there are NRA members,” he said. “But we just don’t vote.”That inactivity, Stinnett explained, is why he founded the Environmental Voter Project five years ago. To further political action, he realized, he didn’t need to convince voters to become environmentalists. He simply had to convince those who already cared to vote. “The low-hanging fruit is not trying to change minds. We just need their behavior changed,” he said.To achieve this, Stinnett outlined the project’s three-step plan: identifying voters, mobilizing them, and then reinforcing the habit to turn them into “super voters,” who can be relied upon to turn out for every election, including those for local and state positions. “There are four times as many of us [environmental voters] as there are NRA members. But we just don’t vote.” — Nathaniel Stinnett, executive director of the Environmental Voter Project Environmental policy advocate suggests new paths to combat climate change Tova Wang on how young people can affect democracy, in advance of National Voter Registration Day Related The methods used to identify voters have grown increasingly sophisticated in recent years, he explained, thanks to data analytics and predictive modeling techniques adopted from the social sciences.“It’s useful to go back to how campaigns used to target voters,” he said. Using public voter files — which record whether you voted, although how you voted remains private — campaigns used to make generalizations. “You’d hear about ‘NASCAR dads’ and ‘soccer moms,’” said Stinnett. However, using enormous but simple polls, campaigns can now crunch data for pinpoint accuracy. Factors such as whether a voter has retained a land line or what car she drives all play a role. “No single data point is ever predictive on its own,” he said. Combined, however, “All of that data allows us to get a really rich picture.”Once non-voters have been identified, Stinnett said they take an approach that relies more on emotion and interpersonal connection than rational thought.“Most people … deciding to take a particular action are not acting like rational beings,” he said. “We’re much more societal beings. We look at what our peers are doing, what our families are doing.” He cited beer commercials, which focus more on aspirational imagery than specifics like taste. “The way you get someone is to appeal to who they are and who they want to be.”Key to turnout, he explained, is leveraging that sense of who we are in the community. Social media and one-on-one conversations have impact. Getting people to promise or share their plan to vote works too.“One of the strongest societal norms we have is that most people want to be thought of as honest,” he explained. “If you’ve never voted, and I get you on Oct. 14 to sign a promise to vote, I have successfully trapped you,” he said. “That’s like a bear trap on your leg. Instead of me convincing you that your one vote matters, it’s now a question of whether you’re a trustworthy person or not.” “… it’s not that your vote doesn’t matter, it’s that your vote is the only thing that matters. It’s so crucially important to be a voter.” — Nathaniel Stinnett read more
More than 350 leaders and organizations across the United States have joined forces to call on President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris to establish a new Office on Children and Youth in the executive branch.The urging for cohesive national leadership is being led by Nemours Children’s Health System, Mental Health America, First Focus on Children, The Education Redesign Lab at Harvard Graduate School of Education, and the Forum for Youth Investment. The coalition notes that the confluence of the pandemic, longstanding racial injustice, and the economic downturn have created a critical inflection point for the nation’s future.“Investing in the health of children is the single most powerful lever to create a healthier society and a stronger economy. We should honor the lives lost to COVID-19 due to chronic health conditions by taking action in child health that will prevent these diseases from occurring,” said R. Lawrence Moss, president and CEO of Nemours Children’s Health System.The intent of the new office is to improve the health, well-being, and education of America’s young, advance equity, eliminate disparities, and ensure that federal policies prioritize their unique needs. The office would convene a “children’s cabinet” of federal agencies to serve as a single coordinating point across and within existing programs and services.The office and children’s cabinet would set a clear national agenda with outcome metrics and a cohesive, multi-agency budget to prioritize the health and well-being of children and youth. The office would also host a White House Conference on Children and Youth to bring in outside experts and stakeholders, including youth, as a catalyst for progress.A strong economic recovery hinges on policies and resources to support schools and communities, rebuild the childcare sector, and address the health and mental health needs of children and youth to lift them above the obstacles created by the pandemic.Raising a nation of young people ready for learning, work, and life requires public systems that actively foster positive youth development based on science and equity. A focus on these issues would create a synergistic response to decrease rates of childhood mental health disorders, expand educational opportunities, and stabilize food security and housing opportunities as part of a long-term investment in the health, quality of life, productivity, and lifespan of America’s youngest generation.“Moving beyond the pandemic to a stronger, healthier nation requires a new, collaborative approach to children’s issues,” said Jennifer Davis, senior advisor at Harvard’s Education Redesign Lab and former education official in the Clinton administration. “Schools alone cannot meet children’s complex needs. At every level of government, we need to focus on a holistic approach to child well-being — one that builds cross-sector support systems for children and youth from cradle to career.”For more information and the accompanying issue brief and charter from these organizations, available at: www.Nemours.org/WHOffice4Kids. read more
In today’s data-driven business landscape, knowledge is power. Companies that use business intelligence and analytics tools more effectively than their competitors are best poised to succeed in the months and years ahead. Thankfully, there is an IT strategy to support the modern analytics-driven business. It outlines how to optimize deployment of analytics ready infrastructure. For example, analytics tools can identify “high-value” customers for the business to focus on. These tools can also identify products with poor performance that should be improved or eliminated.Unfortunately, far too many organizations are still using legacy systems and software incapable of working with the large quantities of data that need to be processed. This problem becomes a double whammy as data grows. IDC predicts that the total amount of data in the “digital universe” will grow to nearly 50 zettabytes (50 trillion gigabytes) by 2020. It’s estimated to more than triple by 2025, growing to 180 zettabytes.In order to combat these difficulties, IT needs a strategy to update aging infrastructure. The solutions should be able to democratize analytics across your entire organization. The goal should enable not only experts, but also “citizen data scientists” to complete powerful and insightful projects.One of the most popular business intelligence platforms is Microsoft SQL Server. The latest version of SQL Server includes more features to support analytics capabilities. Of course, SQL Server must also be paired with a high-performance servers that can handle the elevated levels of demand on processing and memory. Ideally, these servers should support the latest technologies for analytics, such as hyper-convergence and non-volatile dual in-line memory module (NVDIMM).Companies that upgrade to the latest version of SQL Server must answer one important question: Do we deploy the new version on new servers, or make it fit with its existing infrastructure instead? For most, using new hardware will be the right choice. Why? Trying to upgrade existing servers is a time-consuming and difficult task. The process creates frustrations among your employees and takes up effort that could be spent elsewhere. In addition, the presence of other unexpected workloads running on the server can cause your initial capacity estimates to be incorrect. When this happens, you may be forced to start over from square one – which wastes time and effort.Using new servers allows your IT team to install and test SQL Server before it’s put into production. This mitigates any adverse effects to your existing workloads. Using existing infrastructure requires a good deal of guesswork. On the other hand, pre-configured and pre-tested servers such as Dell EMC’s Ready Solutions come with known levels of performance and capability. Think about how much valuable time and effort you could save.The new Dell EMC PowerEdge servers are perfectly suited for the performance demands of modern analytics platforms. For example, we tested SQL Server 2016 on the PowerEdge R730 and the newest R740. The R740 delivers a blistering 41% improvement in transactions per second and cuts average query response time in half.[1]Dell EMC provides PowerEdge servers to run your business. We also offer a suite of services to support these servers throughout their lifecycle, from consulting to installation and deployment to support and maintenance. Dell EMC assists companies that seek to digitally transform their operations, making it easier to process the ever-growing quantities of data and mine them for critical business insights.To read more about the IT strategy to support the modern analytics-driven business, download the Tech Target white paper.To learn more about Dell EMC PowerEdge servers, visit dellemc.com/servers[1] Based on a Dell EMC Engineering study using the TPC-E benchmark to test Microsoft SQL Server 2016, August 2017. Actual performance will vary. read more
Today is World Autism Awareness Day, a day to increase the global understanding and acceptance of people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Autism is described as a “spectrum” because there’s a wide degree of variation in the way ASD affects people. When describing autism, the concept of neurodiversity is becoming more widely used. Neurodiversity is about recognizing and respecting the different ways each of our brains work. It’s also about celebrating the strength those different approaches and viewpoints bring to teams and society at-large.At Dell Technologies, we’re committed to opening opportunity for all while cultivating a culture of inclusion. These efforts are imperative to the business. Not only do diverse teams drive innovation through differences in perspective, the existing talent gap will only get worse over time if ALL qualified candidates are not considered. By 2024 there will be 1.1 million computing-related job openings in the U.S. Yet only 45% of these jobs could be filled based on current U.S. graduation rates. This type of skill gap is a challenge throughout the world at a time when every business is becoming a technology business.Those with ASD are too often being overlooked. Despite ASD candidates often having key skills for success in the tech industry – attention to detail and strong math skills for example – the vast majority of adults with autism are either unemployed or underemployed, with estimates ranging as high as 90%.Scenarios like this are why we are developing innovative recruiting approaches for under-tapped talent pools. More than one in 59 children in the U.S. now have ASD, and about half a million people on the spectrum will become adults over the next decade. We must adapt and evolve our practices to recruit these individuals and prepare for the future workforce.Together with Horace Mann Educational Associates (HMEA) and The Arc of Philadelphia, both nonprofits who serve the ASD community, we welcomed our first class of interns into our Autism Hiring Program in our Hopkinton, Massachusetts office last year. The program resulted in full-time hires in our programming and data science departments. Recognizing that many people on the autism spectrum struggle with the social interaction of a traditional job interview, the Program instead invites candidates to showcase their skills in action. Over two weeks of instructor-led classroom sessions, they learn about Dell Technologies’ vision and opportunities, meet with hiring managers, and work on real-world projects in their field. We are excited to be expanding the program to our Round Rock, Texas headquarters this summer in partnership with The Arc of the Capital Area.As firm believers in the power of collaboration, we recently joined the Autism @ Work Employer Roundtable. Through this coalition, we will work with partners including SAP, Microsoft and Ford to continue perfecting autism-focused hiring initiatives together. We also recently teamed up with Intel to invest in the nonPareil Institute by donating 80 Alienware units to this post-secondary education institute focused on delivering digital technology training to adults with autism. This Dallas-based organization will be opening a new facility in Austin, Texas (near our Round Rock headquarters), this summer.We hope these efforts are just the beginning of what we believe is a true differentiator when it comes to cultivating inclusion and increasing the talent pool. By finding the right models, experts and partners, we can further scale our impact on neurodiversity hiring practices.Ahead of Autism Awareness Month and our Texas program expansion, we spent time with some of our Autism Hiring Program recruits and their managers to learn more about their experiences.Charles “CJ” Surett, a 20-year-old, self-taught Python developer who was hired for a data analytics role in Deployment Services Operations, says, “I don’t really like small talk that’s not about technology. I liked that the interview was casual—I could just talk to the managers about technology and show them how I can help them solve problems.”CJ has already automated several workflow processes by implementing Airflow and GitLab. These are helping his teammates respond to service requests more quickly and accurately, saving time and money. CJ’s manager, Dan Warfield, says, “CJ comes up with great ideas for helping customers, and his mind doesn’t quit. If we get stuck on a problem, he keeps thinking about it while working on other things, and always finds the answer. He has the perfect mix of smarts, drive and passion.”Says CJ, “I have a great team and love being able to experiment with new technologies. Being able to work for a place like Dell Technologies before I even graduated from college has been amazing. I am excited about this program and want more people to join it.”CJ and the other hires receive support from their managers. They’ve also gained newfound independence and purpose: CJ is now able to help support his family in securing a new home, and his fellow hire Seth Hoyt is now able to better support his wife and newborn baby.In turn, they’ve helped our team learn and grow. Dan says, “Working with CJ has taught me the importance of providing clear, written direction. This has improved my communication skills with my whole team. And it’s brought us closer together.”Lou Candiello, our military and disability recruiting leader who was instrumental in developing the Autism Hiring Program says, “The cultural shift has been really positive. As awareness of this program spreads, we hope it helps other team members feel more comfortable talking about their cognitive differences and asking for any accommodations they need to be successful at Dell Technologies.”The Autism Hiring Program is especially meaningful to me personally. As the global lead for the True Ability ERG, I’ve seen how leveraging our team members’ unique abilities can have real business impact, from improving collaboration to developing adaptive technology solutions for customers. Additionally, prior to joining Dell Technologies, I had the opportunity to be SAP’s first hiring manager for a similar program that company runs. I look forward to continuing to collaborate to get these much-needed programs to even more companies.I encourage you to take time this month to learn more about ASD. Also, if you know of a great candidate near either Round Rock, Texas or Hopkinton, Massachusetts, please have them visit jobs.dell.com/neurodiversity for more information and to apply.More Information:United Nations World Autism Awareness DayTrue Ability ERGKVUE read more