Colloquy

Armed troops in the streets of an American city. A leader in a faraway capital determined to exercise his power over the people there. Screams of protest from residents who demand the force's withdrawal. Resistance, violence, and tragic deaths. These are the elements that made Boston the cauldron of the American Revolution in the 1770s. Are they playing out again in the United States today? And what are the limits of looking to history to better understand the current moment? Historian and former presidential adviser Ted Widmer joins us to consider these and other questions about the use of state power then and now.

In the decades after becoming the first Black US citizen to receive his PhD from Harvard, W.E.B. Du Bois helped transform sociology from theory and speculation to a social science rooted in rigorous methodology and hard data. But despite conducting groundbreaking research, particularly on the lives of Black people, Du Bois chose to leave the academy and become an activist, co-founding the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. What inspired him to make the change? And what can we learn today from Du Bois’s research, his writing, and his life during our own time of white backlash? The Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer David Levering Lewis joins us for part two of our look at the life of the early 20th century’s leading intellectual and spokesperson for Black liberation. 

(A word of caution: Several minutes into the show, Professor Levering Lewis describes an episode of racist violence. We have preserved that portion of the conversation, rather than editing it out, because it describes a turning point in Du Bois’s life and career.)

How did the Harvard PhD experience influence W.E.B. Du Bois, the man who would become one of the leading Black activists and intellectuals of the 20th century? And what connections did he make in the vibrant Black community outside of campus? Join us as we explore these questions in the first of a two-part conversation with New York University professor and National Humanities Medal recipient David Levering Lewis, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his two-volume biography of W.E.B. Du Bois.

As states around the country face off in a contest of Gerrymandering, what is the future of voting rights in the United States? Will the Supreme Court nullify what’s left of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965? How will accelerating climate change effect US politics? And what might happen in the all-important election of 2028? Harvard's Frank G. Thomson Professor of Government Stephen Ansolabehere, PhD '89, an expert in public opinion and elections and a consultant for the CBS News Election Decision Desk, recently joined Dean Emma Dench of the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences to address these and other questions in a discussion of elections, energy, and the public mood. 

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, is a neurodegenerative disease linked to repeated head injuries. It has been found in professional athletes, soldiers, and others who have experienced years of those traumas. New research from Harvard Griffin GSAS alumni Chanthia Ma and Guanlan Dong may help us better understand this condition. Their study looks at the smallest units of brain biology—individual neurons—and finds surprising clues written in the DNA itself. Using single-cell genome sequencing, they discovered that neurons in people with CTE carry distinctive patterns of genetic damage—patterns that may overlap with those seen in Alzheimer’s disease. In this episode of Colloquy, Ma discusses how her work not only sheds light on how brain trauma leads to long-term decline but also hints at possible shared mechanisms across different neurodegenerative conditions.

Us against the redcoats. That's how we often think of the American Revolution. In Ken Burns’ latest film, scheduled to drop later this month on PBS, the acclaimed documentarian takes on that simplistic notion of the nation's founding and many others. The revolution was actually a civil war, Burns says, one that pitted Americans, including indigenous and Black folk, against each other as much as the British. 

So, what were the divisions among the inhabitants of the British colonies and their neighbors? How did they flare into war? How did a fledgling nation with no central government or standing army defeat the world’s largest empire? And what were the contributions of indigenous and Black people and women? Philip C. Mead, PhD ’12, former chief historian and head curator of the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, weighs in.

“How long have you been in the snare of the devil?” That was the lose‑lose question asked of those—mostly women—accused of witchcraft in Essex County, where Salem Village was located, in 1692. According to the Cornell University historian Mary Beth Norton, PhD ’69, however, it was the accusers, rather than their targets, who were in the thrall of something powerful. In her 2002 Ambassador Award–winning book In the Devil’s Snare, Norton says that the Salem witchcraft crisis was driven not by a demonic force, but rather by the trauma of the nearby wars with New England’s Indigenous populations—conflicts that had been raging for many years and had left an indelible mark on many refugees who fled to towns on the North Shore of Massachusetts.

We all want to live as long and as well as possible. Diet and exercise are crucial, but how can we make sense of the flood of information, which sometimes seems to contradict itself? More importantly, how can we adapt the information in ways that work for us as individuals?

Know thyself, answers Duke University Professor Herman Pontzer, PhD ’06. Every body has a story, he asserts in his new book, Adaptable. So does every part of our body. The main characters are our organs and systems. The themes and plot are a mishmash of genes and our environment. The result is an astonishing amount of diversity across humanity, united by our common ability to adapt over time and place. Pontzer says that a deeper understanding of how our bodies evolved and how that process shapes our biology can help us better take charge of our health.

2025 Harvard Horizons Scholar Sergio Alarcón Robledo explores ancient Egyptian architecture through an interdisciplinary approach that sits at the crossroads of archaeology, Egyptology, and architecture. By inquiring about the sensorial experiences of the past, the PhD student in Near Eastern languages and civilizations at the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences seeks to understand why ancient funerary structures changed and evolved into monumental buildings. Collaborating with experts from Stanford University, Alarcón Robledo employed acoustic analysis to unravel how these ancient spaces would have shaped sound and, consequently, the human interactions that took place within them. 

The Inka Empire, the largest in the pre-Columbian Americas, is renowned for its impressive engineering feats, including an extensive road network and monumental architecture. Although the Inkas did not have a traditional writing system, they recorded information using a unique method: khipus. These knotted cords were essential tools for communication and record-keeping. Through meticulous structural analysis and documentation, FitzPatrick seeks to uncover the meanings encoded in khipus beyond their numerical knots. FitzPatrick’s project not only aims to advance archaeological knowledge but also seeks to reframe public understanding of the Inka Empire's complex administrative capabilities. By preserving and interpreting khipus, he hopes to reveal a more nuanced history of the Andean civilizations, illuminating the enduring legacy of their cultural innovations for contemporary audiences, as well as a powerful Indigenous perspective on Andean history—one distinct from narratives provided by Europeans.