SHASS News

As technology rapidly propels society forward, MIT is rethinking how it prepares students to face the world and its greatest challenges. Generations of educators have shared knowledge at MIT by connecting lessons to practical applications, but what does the Institute’s motto “mens et manus” (“mind and hand”), referring to hands-on learning, look like in the […]

MIT political scientist Adam Berinsky has been named to the 2025 class of Andrew Carnegie Fellows, a high-profile honor for scholars pursuing research in the social sciences and humanities. The fellowship is provided by The Carnegie Corp. of New York. Berinsky, the Mitsui Professor of Political Science, and 25 other fellows were selected from more than […]

At any given time, about 100,000 people in the U.S. are waiting to become kidney transplant recipients. Roughly one-fifth of those get a new kidney each year, but others die while waiting. In short, the demand for kidneys makes it important to think about how we use the limited supply. A study co-authored by an […]

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), the German polymath whose life and work embodied the connections between the arts and sciences, is said to have described architecture as “frozen music.”  When the new Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building at MIT had its public opening earlier this year, the temperature outside may have been below freezing but […]

It’s considered a scientific landmark: A 1975 meeting at the Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, California, shaped a new safety regime for recombinant DNA, ensuring that researchers would apply caution to gene splicing. Those ideas have been so useful that in the decades since, when new topics in scientific safety arise, there are still […]