u/fmcrimson

I am two months into Harvard’s ASL 1 course, and I’ve finally racked up enough signs and confidence to clumsily string together a few complete sentences at our morning ASL coffee chat. With three deaf preceptors, four beginning classes, and an ASL citation, Harvard's ASL program is a space for students to learn a new language and culture.

As I continue to immerse myself in Harvard’s Deaf culture, I discover that even trivial matters — like chatting in the middle of a movie — is one of many ways that signing’s nonverbalness expands the landscape for connection.

“As a hearing individual, I operate in the Deaf space differently than a deaf person might, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be a part of it or learn a language to connect with other people,” Harvard undergraduate Mia Schenenga tells me. “I think that’s something that’s really been important and impactful to me.”

At the moment, Cambridge Public Schools does not have a district-wide policy on the use of AI in classrooms. But teachers, students and parents say that AI use remains ambiguous and divisive. Although most AI platforms are restricted on district-issued Chromebooks, Gemini is enabled for high school students. Some Cambridge students have even been explicitly encouraged to use Gemini in their coursework.

On average, undergraduate Harvard students say they use artificial intelligence to complete 34.5 percent of their homework.

The class brings together ten undergraduate and graduate students from across disciplines each year, offering an entry point into sensory ethnography. Rather than simply selecting the most technically skilled filmmakers, the goal of the intensely selective application process is to build a cohort that can challenge one another.

Films made for the class have gone on to win major international festivals. Yet what students sometimes remember most is the negative feedback they receive in the course. “You don’t listen to compliments,” one student remembers being told by the professor. “So I gave you what you needed.”

In my humanities-dominated circles, I risk being labeled a heretic by admitting that I think AI prose can be quite skillful, often better than what most college students are capable of. The position of some proponents of the humanities, who utterly reject the notion that much of human writing can be imitated and mechanically reproduced by machines, is not a sustainable one.

If there is continued merit in reading human-generated text — which I think there is — it cannot stem solely from the aesthetic quality of the prose.

But then, what else can it stem from?

Governor Healey made a promise to transform the state into a “global leader” in AI innovation. In 2024, she introduced the Mass Leads Act, a $100 million proposal to “attract AI talent to the state” by providing a tax exemption for data center construction, making it easier for future companies to break ground on new centers.

But a data center in Lowell, Massachusetts encapsulates the local stakes of expansion.

Cambridge's 97-year-old, family-run stationery shop is closing its doors.

Cambridge is widely known, if not defined, by its youth. Yet a growing number of older residents are choosing to stay in this place they call home. By 2030, a projected 20 percent of residents will be over 65, a sharp increase from 10.6 percent in 2010.

Their experiences — from building social networks to navigating rising housing costs — reveal another version of life that exists alongside the city’s constant forward motion. What does it mean to age in this city today, and what does it take to thrive?

The Fifteen Minutes magazine gets to know the city's aging residents in this long-form article.