Colloquy

As the 2022 midterm elections approach, many citizens are worried about the state of our democracy. And with good reason. Our electoral system increasingly produces leaders who do not represent the will of the majority. The national popular vote was lost, for instance, by two of the last four presidents. In the evenly divided United States Senate, the 578,000 citizens of Wyoming have as much representation as the 39 million of California. And Gerrymandering? Aided by complex computer algorithms, it’s easier than ever for political parties to choose their Congressional voters—and harder for majorities to dislodge them.

This month, we discuss the history and state of our democracy with Harvard Kennedy School Professor Alex Keyssar. Professor Keyssar’s books include The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, which was named the best book in U.S. history for the year 2001 by both the American Historical Association and the Historical Society and was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. In 2004 and 2005, Keyssar chaired the Social Science Research Council's National Research Commission on Voting and Elections. Keyssar's latest book, Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College? looks at that institution’s persistence despite several attempts throughout history to reform it. Alex Keyssar got his PhD from GSAS in 1977.

Co-chaired by GSAS Dean Emma Dench, Harvard University's Task Force on Managing Student Mental Health reported in 2020 that nearly one in four graduate students surveyed exhibited symptoms of moderate to severe depression. Nearly one in four exhibited symptoms of moderate to severe generalized anxiety. Underrepresented minority students, first-generation students, low-income students, and students who identified as LGBTQ all were more likely to screen positive for these conditions.

This month on Colloquy, we're taking a deep dive into the graduate student mental health crisis with Dr. Emily Bernstein, PhD ’20, a clinical psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital's Center for Digital Mental Health. In 2018 while working toward her doctorate, Dr. Bernstein and her cohorts piloted a successful group intervention for GSAS students that’s still offered today. Since then, she and her colleagues have published research on ways to address the increasing need for mental health services. She talks about that work, the challenges faced by graduate students, and why she thinks our smartphones could become an important vehicle for delivering mental health care.

Does objectivity exist? Is it possible for news organizations to cut through the noise of the digital age and get citizens the information they need to be responsible participants in democracy? How can journalists build trust with disenchanted readers on both the right and the left of the political spectrum?

Speaking to these questions are New York Times executive editor, Joe Kahn, AB ’87, AM ’90, and Danielle Allen, PhD ’01, Harvard's James Bryant Conant University Professor and Director of the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics. Their conversation, which took place at the Harvard Club of New York City last November, is moderated by Columbia University School of Journalism Professor Michael Schudson, AM ’70, PhD ’76.

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

Is this saying from a Zen Buddhist Text? The Hindu Bhagavad Gita? Actually, these are the words of Jesus . . . according to the 2,000-year-old Gospel of Thomas. The Princeton University scholar Elaine Pagels, PhD '70, says that this text—discovered in Egypt in 1945 along with the Gospel of Philip—contains Christ’s “secret teachings,” in contrast to those meant for public worship and included in the four canonical gospels of the New Testament.

So why were the gospels of Thomas and Philip banned by the church as illegitimate and heretical over 1600 years ago? And how do they change the way we understand the Christian tradition today?

This month on Colloquy: The “Gnostic Gospels” and their place in the history of early Christianity with Elaine Pagels.

Claire Lamman is part of a team of astrophysicists using data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument to map as many as 50 million galaxies. In this talk, delivered in April 2024 at the annual Harvard Horizons Symposium, Lamman describes her distinctive contribution to this effort—gauging the “intrinsic alignment” of galaxies to better understand the universe and how it evolves.