Articles

“I was wrong” is one of the most difficult things for a human being to say. Imagine saying it when you have been a conservative public intellectual and expert on public education for decades. Yet that is exactly what Diane Silvers Ravitch ’60 does in her engaging new memoir, An Education: How I Changed My Mind About Schools and Almost Everything Else.

While Bernie for Burlington: The Rise of the People’s Politician is a very different kind of work from Dan Chiasson’s previous five books—all collections of poetry—as soon as you hear Chiasson discuss it, you know that he was destined to write this book.

“Because I grew up in Dhaka, in Bangladesh, right in the middle of the smoggy, light-polluted city, I do not remember seeing any star,” says Lamiya Mowla ’13, assistant professor of astronomy. That changed when she arrived at Wellesley.

In the College’s new Narrative Lab, students look deeply into how narratives are constructed and the ways they create meaning.

For 50 years, researchers at what is now the Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW) have conducted groundbreaking interdisciplinary studies on social issues such as the effects of placing children in child care, gender equity in education, and the role of social media in adolescents’ lives. From the beginning, its mission has been to deploy rigorous academic research to address real-world problems.

Do plants “belong” in a particular place? Why are some considered “native” and others “invasive”? Why do they have Latin names? Are they really “male” and “female”? These are some of the wide-ranging questions at the heart of the new book Botany of Empire: Plant Worlds and the Scientific Legacies of Colonialism by Banu Subramaniam, the Luella LaMer Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies.

The Blue golf team ranked as high as eighth in the NCAA Division III national rankings during a record-setting spring. Bolstered by a talented class of first-years, including 2024 Wellesley Athletics Rookie of the Year Audrey Wang ’27 (above), the Blue earned team victories at the Jekyll Island Invitational, the two Vassar Invitationals, the Ann S. Batchelder Invitational at Nehoiden Golf Club, and the Jack Leaman Invitational. The Blue ended the year in a tie for second at the Liberty League Championships, narrowly missing this year’s NCAA championship.

In June, Andrew Shennan moved out of an office he had been occupying since 1999. During send-off events in the spring, colleagues remarked on Shennan’s brilliance, kindness, optimism, ability to see arguments from many angles, level-headedness, devotion to the College, and his continuing commitment to neckties in a business-casual era.

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