Word: polarizer
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...soon as Summers was out, speculation about his likely successor began. The conventional wisdom in the election of a Harvard president is that the Corporation nearly always elects someone who is the polar opposite of the most recent occupant of the office. In 1701, in seeking to find a successor to the aggressively pious Increase Mather, Class of 1656, the Corporation finally ended up in 1708 with John Leverett, Class of 1680, Harvard’s first lay president and its first lawyer. Cotton Mather, Class of 1678, who had hoped to succeed his father, was so furious at this...
Perhaps Harvard should embrace global warming. Weather could become one of Cambridge’s major selling points. While Duke languishes amidst newly intensified tropical storms, Harvard will enjoy 70-degree weather in January. Who would ever want to go anywhere else? Polar ice caps may melt, but it was, after all, a Harvard graduate who reminded us that “a rising tide lifts all boats...
Things are never quiet on the endangered-species list a current membership of 1,176 animals and 747 plants. As 2007 dawns, two iconic species--the polar bear and the bald eagle--are moving in opposite directions in the fight for survival...
Last month the U.S. proposed designating the polar bear as threatened, after starvation and drownings caused by melting sea ice helped cut the animal's global population to fewer than 25,000. By contrast, this year could spell the bald eagle's release from an almost 40-year stay on the list. Elimination of the pesticide DDT and crackdowns on hunting and development have allowed the national bird to rebound from 417 nesting pairs in the lower 48 states in the early 1960s to more than 7,000 today, not to mention a population of 40,000 in Alaska...
...polar bear have something powerful on their side, and that's the simple fact that people love them. Like pandas, tigers and other so-called charismatic mega-fauna, polar bears are one of those iconic animals that almost everyone agrees the world would be far poorer without. That's a fight even the most stubborn White House might not want to take on. "There's a legal battle and a public relations battle," says Brendan Cummings, an attorney for the Center for Biodiversity. "I don't think the Administration wanted to lose both of them." The fear of that twin...