The tools of art
Bob Alexander, a lifelong Bostonian, has lived on the same street in Allston all his life. Now that the Harvard Allston Education Portal has come to his neighborhood, he said, he and his wife, Paula, attend every event there they can. “We’re Bostonians from birth, and we love this place,” Bob Alexander said. “We come to all the talks.” The Alexanders were at the Ed Portal last month to hear Doris Sommer, the Ira Jewell Williams Jr. Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and professor of African and African American Studies, speak to a crowd of nearly 50 about how the arts, serving as “cultural agents,” promote education, innovation, and citizenship. The lecture was the most recent presentation of the Ed Portal’s faculty speaker series. Introducing Sommer, Robert Lue, faculty director for the Ed Portal, professor of the practice of molecular and cellular biology, and faculty director of HarvardX, said that her scholarship and breadth of work reflected...