Christy DeSmith

Boston

Freelance Writer and Editor at Freelance

Writer, editor, journalist, runner, reader, mom. First-gen college grad. Current: @Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Former: @BostonGlobe and @StarTribune.

Articles

Era of U.S. dollar may be winding down— Harvard Gazette

6 days ago | news.harvard.edu | Christy DeSmith

Work & Economy 8 min read It looks like the end of an era for the U.S. dollar. In his new book “Our Dollar, Your Problem: An Insider’s View of Seven Turbulent Decades of Global Finance, and the Road Ahead,” Kenneth Rogoff looks back on the currency’s dominant run in global trade and central bank reserves for a host of other countries.
Lifelong fascination with German culture guided grad — Harvard Gazette

1 week ago | news.harvard.edu | Christy DeSmith

6 min read A collection of features and profiles covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement. Addie Esposito ’25 grew up with stories about life in Germany. “My mom was there for two years just after the Berlin Wall fell,” Esposito said.
Medical anthropology pioneer Arthur Kleinman to retire- Harvard Gazette

1 week ago | news.harvard.edu | Christy DeSmith

4 min read A long career bridging medicine, social science, and the humanities has left Arthur Kleinman with one critical insight. “Care, critically understood and practiced, matters most,” he told a packed lecture hall last week.
When foreign governments took aim at universities — Harvard Gazette

1 week ago | news.harvard.edu | Christy DeSmith

Nation & World 6 min read Recent government demands on U.S. universities have some scholars searching for the right historical analogue for insights. “I’ve been thinking about this budding conflict between the state and universities as possibly a replay of the 1950s” and the McCarthy era, said William C.
Slave trade database moving to Harvard

3 weeks ago | phys.org | Christy DeSmith

SlaveVoyages, a tool for data on history's largest slave trades, is getting a new home. Word of the project's upcoming move was shared recently by Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research.
SlaveVoyages finds new home at Harvard — Harvard Gazette

4 weeks ago | news.harvard.edu | Christy DeSmith

4 min read SlaveVoyages, a groundbreaking tool for data on history’s largest slave trades, is getting a new home. Word of the project’s upcoming move was shared recently by Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research.
Slave trade database moving to Harvard — Harvard Gazette

4 weeks ago | news.harvard.edu | Christy DeSmith

4 min read SlaveVoyages, a groundbreaking tool for data on history’s largest slave trades, is getting a new home. Word of the project’s upcoming move was shared recently by Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research.
What we still need to learn from pandemic — Harvard Gazette

4 weeks ago | news.harvard.edu | Christy DeSmith

6 min read Social distancing, school closures, and stay-at-home orders became hotly disputed during the 2020 COVID-19 crisis. How should these protocols be viewed today? The new book “In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us” by a pair of Princeton University professors finds no evidence these “non-pharmaceutical interventions” actually reduced mortality rates.
Heartbreak Hill? These marathoners have seen worse. — Harvard Gazette

1 month ago | news.harvard.edu | Christy DeSmith

9 min read For two years, grief left her body feeling like a pressure-cooker. “It wasn’t until my junior year that I discovered something that really helped with the release of my emotions,” said Brooke Stanford ’25, who lost her mother, Andrea, to pancreatic cancer two weeks before arriving on campus as a first-year in 2021.
Separated by a border, but with fates entwined — Harvard Gazette

1 month ago | news.harvard.edu | Christy DeSmith

Nation & World 5 min read From afar, the 2,000-mile U.S. border with Mexico appears as a hard economic, political, and cultural boundary. But mayors of cities that flank the divide have a different view. “We’re a binational community,” said Mayor Carlos Peña Ortiz, HKS ’20 of Reynosa, Mexico, which mirrors McAllen, Texas, across the Rio Grande.