Authors in Conversation

Robert Waldinger, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Director of its Grant Study, joined the Harvard Club of Boston on May 30th to speak on “What Science Can Teach Us About the Good Life: Lessons from the 80-Year-Long Harvard Study of Adult Development.” The Grant Study has been examining the lives of two groups of men using a variety of measures, and Dr. Waldinger is now introducing new neuroscience ones to better understand how life experience and neurobiology interact to foster healthy aging. An outstanding thinker and communicator, Professor Waldinger’s 2014 TED talk on the Study has garnered over 20,140,000 views.

Dr. Waldinger received his B.A. from Harvard College and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. A practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, he teaches HMS students and psychiatry residents. He also serves as Director of Massachusetts General Hospital’s Center for Psychodynamic Therapy and Research and on the faculty of the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute. He is the author of numerous scientific papers as well as two books: Psychiatry for Medical Students (American Psychiatric Press, 1984, 1991, 1997), and Effective Psychotherapy with Borderline Patients: Case Studies (Macmillan, 1987).

Jill Abramson (AB '76, Harvard), former New York Times Executive Editor; Senior Lecturer, English Department, Harvard University

Hear Professor Jill Abramson’s spellbinding discussion of her distinguished career in journalism. Setting the stage with her first reporting assignment, she describes how Time magazine sparked her interest in journalism by fortuitously calling her while she was working on Nantucket in the summer of ’73. Word was spreading that a jeep driven by a scion of the Kennedy family had flipped, and Time wanted details but a storm prevented reporters from reaching the island. A student with no reporting experience, Abramson delivered, and the world learned that Joseph P. Kennedy 3d had crashed his jeep, paralyzing teenager Pamela Kelley for life. Several years later, after graduating from Harvard, Abramson embarked on a career in journalism defined by integrity, talent and courage. She ultimately held senior editorial positions at The Wall Street Journal and became the first woman Washington Bureau Chief, Managing Editor and Executive Editor of The New York Times. During this podcast, Professor Abramson reflects on the challenge of deciding whether to hold back stories in light of national security interests, the satisfaction of a particular Pulitzer, and the joy of teaching journalism to Harvard, Yale and Princeton students.

Harvard Club of Boston's Author Series hosted a special evening conversation with renowned historian Niall Ferguson and the nation's foremost network science expert Albert-Laszlo Barabasi. In his most recent book, The Square and the Tower, Ferguson applies lessons from Barabasi's pioneering work in network science to the domain of historical analysis, drawing insights from a wide range of fascinating examples across past decades and centuries, with important implications for current affairs. As Barabasi has demonstrated both in his academic work and in his popular writing (Linked), network science research has led to meaningful discoveries in areas ranging from biology and medicine, to institutional analysis and social networks.