Boston College

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You gotta fight for your right

. . . to evaluate the quality of various college parties (and assign a grade accordingly)
There are a lot of colleges in Boston, and they all have a lot of parties. I spent the semester trying to chronicle them for the purpose of science.
By JOE DIFAZIO | January 26, 2012

Campus safe spaces offer comfy couches and open minds

Safety in numbers
Two months into freshman year, I was sitting in a friend's dorm room when Melissa, the broadcast journalism student who lived down the hall, burst into the room. She was near tears.
By LIZ PELLY | September 28, 2011

Oh, the Humanities

6,574,357 hours of scholarship
The data contained within the following illustration represents the most common words found in the titles of more than 150 doctoral theses in the humanities and social sciences published in 2010.
By EUGENIA WILLIAMSON | April 27, 2011

An (almost) A-to-Z guide to Boston

From Ben Affleck to Yawkey Way
Welcome to Boston, college kids.
By LUKE O'NEIL | January 27, 2011

Search-term smackdown: Boston rivalries settled with Google Books Ngram Viewer

Golden Ngrams
Two weeks ago, Google chucked a shiny new Web toy down the chimneys of Internet-research nerds everywhere: the Google Books Ngram Viewer, a search tool/treasure hunt that shows you the frequency of specific words in literature going back to the 1500s.
By SHAULA CLARK | December 30, 2010

Night Fruit add grit to a dream-pop landscape

Nocturnal cravings
My fascination with dream pop — a genre characterized by washy guitars and airy, indistinct vocals — lies in its effects when done right: a sense of vague translocation and a fleeting feeling of transcendence.
By P. NICK CURRAN | September 29, 2010

BU offers the class of 1970 a second chance at complacency

After School Special
Boston University’s class of 2010 celebrates its commencement this weekend, and BU has invited the class of 1970 to tag along.
By CLIF GARBODEN | May 12, 2010

Ledge Lessons

We love you, stressed-out college kids! So relax, and remember how good you have it.
As advocates of higher education and living as long as medically possible, we were sad to read that, according to new-media-powerhouse Web site the Daily Beast, Greater Boston is home to not one but five of the most stressful colleges in the United States.
By CHRIS FARAONE | April 28, 2010

Elena Kagan’s shaky record

What a Kagan appointment to the Supreme Court could mean for civil liberties
As a potential Obama nominee for Supreme Court justice, Elena Kagan has liberal bona fides and the likely support of the right. But if her record is any indication, she’s more likely to side with the conservative bloc on matters of executive power and war-time presidential authority.
By HARVEY SILVERGLATE AND KYLE SMEALLIE | April 16, 2010

The question of Iran

Plus, Tim Flaherty for State Senator
Once again, Washington’s gunslingers are agitating for a war with Iran. Cheered on by Fox News and enabled by uncritical talking heads such as NBC’s David Gregory and PBS’s Charlie Rose, the let’s-bomb-or-invade-or-maybe-do-both-to-Iran brigade is busy softening up public opinion for a war they seem to think is inevitable.
By EDITORIAL | April 07, 2010

Rebounding

More than two decades after Kevin Mackey pulled off the then-biggest upset in NCAA Tourney history, he made it to the NBA.
When March Madness tips off tonight, Kevin Mackey will be in the stands taking notes. As a professional-basketball scout, he's looking for tomorrow's NBA stars.
By JON HART | March 17, 2010

Worth the gamble?

A push for full-scale Vegas-style casinos is in the cards again. Can poker and craps save a state in freefall?
Just three years after Rhode Island voters killed plans for a full-scale, Vegas-style casino, big-time gambling is in the cards again.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | December 16, 2009

Critical Mass

Over the years, UMass Amherst has proven to be a reliable hotbed for political hypocrisy and squelching of free speech
If free speech is what gives value to the campus "marketplace of ideas," UMass Amherst would long ago have gone bankrupt.
By KYLE SMEALLIE AND HARVEY SILVERGLATE | November 18, 2009

Play by play: October 16, 2009

This week's theater listings
Boston's weekly theater schedule
By JEFFREY GANTZ | October 14, 2009

Father Feeney

A Heretic Courted By The Church
Leonard Feeney, a defrocked Jesuit priest and pretty much of a legend in this city as a result of the “sermons” he preached on the Common every Sunday without fail for eight years, from 1949 to 1957, attracting sometimes as many as a thousand people to heckle and to laugh as much as to listen—Father Leonard Feeney is in the news again.
By DAVE O'BRIAN | October 09, 2009

Play by play: October 9, 2009

Theater listings
Boston's weekly theater schedule
By JEFFREY GANTZ | October 07, 2009

Less can be more

Going Green
It's one thing to shoot for an ecologically softer lifestyle -- one that's more deliberate, and less wasteful.
By DEIRDRE FULTON | September 30, 2009

Doom predictions

Gays into the crystal ball
Plenty of seemingly unemployable people manage to make decent livings even though they're consistently wrong.
By AL DIAMON | September 30, 2009

Play by Play: October 2, 2009

Plays from A to Z
Boston's weekly theater schedule
By JEFFREY GANTZ | September 30, 2009

Play by Play: September 25, 2009

Plays from A to Z
Boston's weekly theater schedule
By JEFFREY GANTZ | September 22, 2009

Yoon or Flaherty

Who will win the chance to challenge Menino?
Boston voters will go to the polls in less than seven weeks to choose two candidates, out of the four now running, to face off against each other in November's mayoral election.
By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN | August 20, 2009

Muzzle Awards: Collegiate Division

New England campuses muzzle free speech
In a 1957 Supreme Court decision upholding the free-speech rights of university professors ( Sweezy v. New Hampshire ), Justice Felix Frankfurter quoted prominent South African scholars on the importance of academic freedom.
By HARVEY SILVERGLATE | July 10, 2009

Aerosmith's Kramer put the 'Line' in 'Brookline'

In this book excerpt, Kramer recalls his life in greater Boston before the boys hit it big
All I know is that it's a fucking miracle that none of the five of us are dead.
By JOEY KRAMER | June 24, 2009

Scammer solstice

Football meets fraud in Georgia. Plus, Wazzu wackiness, and Tim Donaghy gets busted up.
It's summertime, and the scammin' is easy. What else can explain the recent appearance of a former NFL player in court to face 22 counts of . . . wait for it . . . mortgage fraud!
By MATT TAIBBI | June 17, 2009

By | January 01, 0001

Reggae revival

Booming in Boston's underground, Caribbean riddims are about to burst back into the mainstream
The climate is tropical, sweet skunk fills the air, and reggae jams are hitting such lofty decibels that I can't even feel my phone vibrate.
By CHRIS FARAONE | May 21, 2009

Play by Play, May 8, 2009

Plays from A to Z
Theater around town
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 07, 2009

By | January 01, 0001

Books tour

A guide to unofficial campus visits
While most area colleges continue to offer predictably boring campus tours that amount to wandering through academic ghost towns imagining departed crowds, there are also some alternatives to the standard walk-and-talk routine.
By JULIA RAPPAPORT | April 29, 2009

Nervous, stressed, and depressed, LLC

What's a recent law grad expected to do in this economy?
Twenty-seven-year-old Jesse White is a temporary staff attorney at a domestic-violence nonprofit in the South End.
By KARA BASKIN | April 30, 2009