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From the Editors of 02138

This issue of 02138 is about transitions—from one university president to another, from one generation of artists and writers to a younger collection of voices, from the diligence of the work year to the anticipation of summer pastimes.

On July 1, Derek Bok will end his service as interim president and Drew Gilpin Faust will officially become the first female president in Harvard history. It’s an exciting moment, but also one with plenty of unanswered questions. While Bok has been a steady hand at the helm, Faust is an intriguing but largely unknown quantity. How did she rise to the top and where will she lead Harvard? We asked Jacob Hale Russell to talk to Bok’s friends and colleagues to see what lessons his example might hold for his successor (p.70). Meanwhile, Richard Bradley, who has written about both Lawrence Summers and Derek Bok in the past, now turns his eye to Drew Faust, and finds a woman gifted in university politics but whose presidential priorities have yet to emerge (p.58).

With summer around the corner, we’re also taking a look at some of the artists and writers whose work you’ll be hearing about in the next few months—and we visit some of the artistic elders who’ve influenced them. While Norman Mailer (p.26), Pete Seeger (p.53), and Mira Nair (p.86) reflect on what they’ve done and still hope to do, 37-year-old saxophone phenom Josh Redman guides us through the San Francisco jazz scene (p.72), and the popular band Pink Martini kicks off a new tour of the musical past (p.108). And speaking of musicals, we drop in on Legally Blonde, now on Broadway, to see how one of pop culture’s most famous Harvard grads is holding up (p.19). I’m happy to say that Elle Woods looks poised to take the world by storm—again.

Finally, we look at the transitions between Harvard generations, from those now hoping to be admitted to Harvard to those who famously didn’t. In “It’s Not Exactly Lying” (p.54), Patricia Marx shares some of the more egregious (and comic) stories of the measures some applicants and their parents will take in order to land that thick envelope. Recipients of thinner envelopes might take heart from “The Rejects,” (p.96) stories of some of the most successful people never to get into Harvard.

There is one more transition I should mention—02138’s. With this issue, we’re wrapping up our freshman year of publication. We’ll be back in September to begin Year Two. In the meantime, we want to thank you for all the feedback you’ve given us, the phone calls you’ve answered, the letters and e-mails you’ve written, and the countless other ways that the Harvard community has supported the birth of a new magazine. It’s been a wonderful year, and we couldn’t have done it without you.

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Bom S. Kim