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Populism: a case-by-case study

Discussions about populism have been front and center in recent societal debates — online, in the news, and in social settings. The subject has also drawn intense interest from academics and brought...

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How writing technology shaped classical thinking

The Roman poet Lucretius’ epic work “De rerum natura,” or “On the Nature of Things,” is the oldest surviving scientific treatise written in Latin. Composed around 55 B.C.E., the text is a lengthy piece...

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MLK Luncheon: America’s bank of justice is overdrawn but not bankrupt

In one of the less-remembered passages of Martin Luther King Jr.’s celebrated “I have a dream” speech in 1963, he spoke eloquently about the large debt owed by this country to its black citizens after...

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Twenty-five ways in which MIT has transformed computing

This month MIT is celebrating the launch of the new $1 billion MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing. To help commemorate the event, here’s a list of 25 ways in which MIT has already...

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Chernobyl: How bad was it?

Not long after midnight on April 26, 1986, the world’s worst nuclear power accident began. Workers were conducting a test at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukraine when their operations spun...

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Learning to study a painful past

If you ask MIT Associate Professor Lerna Ekmekçioğlu how she wound up in academia, she has a straightforward answer.“I was born a historian,” Ekmekçioğlu says. “It was my destiny.”That natural affinity...

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3 Questions: Why are student-athletes amateurs?

Debate about the unpaid status of NCAA athletes has surged in the last decade — and did so again last month when the best player in men’s college basketball, Zion Williamson, got injured in a...

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The quest to understand human society scientifically

Is it appropriate to evaluate the causes of suicide but dismiss mental illness as a contributing factor? What happens when you talk about war deaths as colored wedges on a chart? Does that change the...

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From science class to the stock exchange

Stephon Henry-Rerrie grew up in Brooklyn as the oldest of five siblings. He loved math puzzles from a young age and chose a premed track in his specialized high school. He never thought he’d study at...

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In cancer research, a winding road to discovery

In 1961, people in the suburb of Niles, Illinois, experienced what they termed a “cancer epidemic.” Over a dozen children in the town were diagnosed with leukemia within a short time. Fears quickly...

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The politics of ugly buildings

In 1984, when the British government was planning to build a flashy modernist addition to the National Gallery in London, Prince Charles offered a dissenting view. The proposed extension, he said,...

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Dwaipayan Banerjee receives 2019 Levitan Prize in the Humanities

Assistant Professor Dwaipayan Banerjee of the Program in Science, Technology, and Society (STS) has been awarded the 2019 James A. (1945) and Ruth Levitan Prize in the Humanities. The prestigious award...

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Engineers set the standards

It might not seem consequential now, but in 1863, Scientific American weighed in on a pressing technological issue: the standardization of screw threads in U.S. machine shops. Given standard-size...

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A scholar and teacher re-examines moments in the history of STEM

When Clare Kim began her fall 2017 semester as the teaching assistant for 21H.S01, the inaugural “MIT and Slavery” course, she didn’t know she and her students would be creating a historical moment of...

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3Q: David Mindell on his vision for human-centered robotics

David Mindell, Frances and David Dibner Professor of the History of Engineering and Manufacturing in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences and professor of aeronautics and astronautics,...

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Philip Freelon, professor of the practice and champion of diversity in...

Philip G. Freelon MArch ’77, professor of the practice in the MIT Department of Architecture, lead architect for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, and a...

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When religion meets secularism in urban planning

One of Babak Manouchehrifar’s favorite places in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a city block on Prospect Street that hosts residences, a mosque, a synagogue, and a church. This is unsurprising...

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Taking the next giant leaps

In July, the world celebrated the 50th anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 moon landing. MIT played an enormous role in that accomplishment, helping to usher in a new age of space exploration. Now...

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How to make a book last for millennia

First discovered in 1947 by Bedouin shepherds looking for a lost sheep, the ancient Hebrew texts known as the Dead Sea Scrolls are some of the most well-preserved ancient written materials ever found....

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Uncovering links between architecture, politics, and society

A building is many things: a stylistic statement, a form shaped to its function, and a reflection of its era.To MIT architectural historian Timothy Hyde, a building represents something else as...

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Understanding populism

We are living in an age of populism, according to a wide array of pundits and politicians. But what does that mean, exactly? Some high-profile scholars examined that issue at an MIT public forum on...

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J-WAFS announces 2019 Solutions Grants supporting agriculture and clean water

The development of new technologies often starts with funded university research. Venture capital firms are eager to back well-tested products or services that are ready to enter the startup phase....

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A new lens into the past

Remnants of ancient Roman structures withstand centuries of wear and warfare across Europe, recording the history and culture of the people who lived around them. But hidden within mortar, and hinted...

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Computing and artificial intelligence: Humanistic perspectives from MIT

The MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing (SCC) will reorient the Institute to bring the power of computing and artificial intelligence to all fields at MIT, and to allow the future of...

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The permanent struggle for liberty

Where do democratic states with substantial personal liberty come from? Over the years, many grand theories have emphasized one specific factor or another, including culture, climate, geography,...

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A new act for opera

In November 1953, the Nationaltheater in Mannheim, Germany, staged a new opera, the composer Boris Blacher’s “Abstrakte Oper Nr. 1,” which had debuted just months previously. As it ran, music fans were...

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Meet the 2019-20 MLK Visiting Professors and Scholars

Founded in 1990, the Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) Visiting Professors and Scholars Program honors the life and legacy of Martin Luther King by increasing the presence of, and recognizing the...

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Engineers put Leonardo da Vinci’s bridge design to the test

In 1502 A.D., Sultan Bayezid II sent out the Renaissance equivalent of a government RFP (request for proposals), seeking a design for a bridge to connect Istanbul with its neighbor city Galata....

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3 Questions: Alan Lightman’s new novel about Cambodia and family

MIT’s Alan Lightman is a physicist who made a leap to becoming a writer — one with an unusually broad range of interests. In his novels, nonfiction books, and essays, Lightman, a professor of the...

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3 Questions: Historian Elizabeth Wood on election interference

Elizabeth Wood is a professor of history and the author of three books on Russia: “Roots of Russia’s War in Ukraine”(co-authored; Woodrow Wilson Center and Columbia University Press, 2016); “Performing...

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Meet the 2019 tenured professors in the School of Humanities, Arts, and...

Dean Melissa Nobles and the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS) announced that five members of the school's faculty members have received tenure. Their extensive research and...

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Historian of the hinterlands

History can help us face hard truths. The places Kate Brown studies are particularly full of them.  Brown, a historian in MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society, has made a career out of...

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PhD student Marc Aidinoff explores how technology impacts public policy

“Computers have encapsulated so many collective hopes and fears for the future,” says Marc Aidinoff, a PhD candidate in History/Anthropology/Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS), a doctoral program...

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MIT art installation aims to empower a more discerning public

Videos doctored by artificial intelligence, culturally known as “deepfakes,” are being created and shared by the public at an alarming rate. Using advanced computer graphics and audio processing to...

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Uncovering the role of technology and medicine in deaf and signing worlds

If the joy and excitement of following your own path could be personified, it would look like Timothy Loh. A love of languages led him nearly around the world to study, and then to MIT, where he is a...

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Bringing figures in anticolonial politics out of the shadows

Independence movements are complicated. Consider Burma (now Myanmar), which was governed as a province of British India until 1937, when it was separated from India. Burma then attained self-rule in...

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3 Questions: Shola Lawal on human rights and social justice

It’s been a banner year for Nigerian journalist Shola Lawal. The young reporter, who focuses on human rights and social justice issues, was selected as the 2019 International Women’s Media Foundation’s...

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MIT Press authors earn coveted “best of” book honors in 2019

The MIT Press recently announced that six MIT Press authors were awarded “best of” recognition in 2019. From Bill Gates’ recommendation of “Growth,” by one of his “favorite authors,” to “2016 in...

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Exploring hip hop history with art and technology

A new museum is coming to New York City in 2023, the year of hip-hop’s 50th birthday, and an MIT team has helped to pave the way for the city to celebrate the legacy of this important musical genre —...

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How to stage a revolution

Revolutions are monumental social upheavals that can remake whole nations, dismantling — often violently — old paradigms. But the stories of the epic struggles that leave their mark on the world’s...

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3 Questions: Professor Kenda Mutongi on Africa, women, power — and human decency

MIT Professor Kenda Mutongi teaches courses in African history, world history, and gender history, and serves on the MIT Africa Working Group. She is the author of two award-winning books: “Matatu: A...

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3 Questions: Isabelle de Courtivron on the shock of becoming old

“Only those in whom youth has not entirely died are capable of speaking of old age,” writes Benoite Groult; this makes MIT Professor Emerita Isabelle de Courtivron eminently qualified to write on the...

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The complex effects of colonial rule in Indonesia

The areas of Indonesia where Dutch colonial rulers built a huge sugar-producing industry in the 1800s remain more economically productive today than other parts of the country, according to a study...

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Charlotte Minsky and Lyndie Mitchell Zollinger named 2020 Gates Cambridge...

MIT seniors Charlotte Minsky and Lyndie Mitchell Zollinger have won the prestigious Gates Cambridge Scholarship, which offers students an opportunity to pursue graduate study in the field of their...

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Mesoamerican copper smelting technology aided colonial weaponry

When Spanish invaders arrived in the Americas, they were generally able to subjugate the local peoples thanks, in part, to their superior weaponry and technology. But archeological evidence indicates...

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Six from MIT elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences for 2020

Six MIT faculty members are among more than 250 leaders from academia, business, public affairs, the humanities, and the arts elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the academy announced...

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Meet the MIT bilinguals: Dual history and planetary science major Charlotte...

“I wasn’t someone who grew up thinking of MIT as my dream school. But, at the end of the day I knew I couldn’t say no to MIT.”  It was not a lack of enthusiasm or appreciation for MIT that Charlotte...

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How growth of the scientific enterprise influenced a century of quantum physics

Austrian quantum theorist Erwin Schrödinger first used the term “entanglement,” in 1935, to describe the mind-bending phenomenon in which the actions of two distant particles are bound up with each...

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3 Questions: How MIT experienced the 1918-19 flu pandemic

Just over a century ago, the world grappled with a major pandemic when the H1N1 influenza virus infected about 500 million people in 1918 and 1919. When the virus first appeared, MIT had just relocated...

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3 Questions: Anne McCants on climate change in history

MIT faculty, students, and alumni in the humanistic fields have research-informed perspectives that can help the world address the myriad social and ecological impacts of climate change. The following...

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