Historically, corporations have tended to view global climate change and greenhouse gas emissions as environmental issues that don’t affect their bottom line, and therefore don’t affect how they do business. That’s changing as business leaders become increasingly aware of the ways in which climate change threatens the profitability and value of their companies — and […]

After graduating from Duke University in North Carolina, Cowan earned a law degree from Northeastern University in Massachusetts. He remained in Boston after law school. There, he emerged as a popular mentor for young black professionals and was often tapped to help diversify the city’s institutions (he once helped Mitt Romney identify lawyers of color […]

Mr. Cowan, a 43-year-old North Carolina native and Duke University graduate, came to Boston to attend Northeastern University School of Law and stayed. He stepped down as Mr. Patrick’s chief of staff two months ago, saying he planned to return to the private sector. He said he agreed to the governor’s request that he take […]

Watching and waiting — and strategizing — can be a difficult choice to make given the “herd mentality” that has developed around MOOCS, according to Peter Stokes, executive director of postsecondary innovation in the College of Professional Studies at Northeastern University. Still, he thinks there’s value in the approach. “It’s certainly reasonable for an institution […]

The USDA defines a “food desert” as any location without a grocery store within a one-mile radius. When Josh Trautwein goes to work at the MGH Charlestown HealthCare Center, he sees the effects of Boston’s food deserts firsthand. “People are resigned to shopping at corner stores, which are usually more expensive and have a narrower […]

The decision meant disappointment for some projects, including FuturICT, which had aimed at creating “a planetary scale computer” for helping predict events like natural disasters. Some of the reasoning used to reject FuturICT was “quite crazy,” and the project’s leaders should be “pretty shocked,” Alex Vespignani, a professor at Northeastern University in Boston who is […]

Even the top schools acknowledge that much of the more formulaic learning can be done online, often before the campus programme begins. But surely this is an argument for cutting the length of the on-campus programme? Even if universities still have their heads in the sand, prospective students do not. According to a national opinion […]

“There are a lot of good ideas here that will take a bite out of violent crime,” said James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University. “But in terms of mass murder, these steps are just a nibble.”  

Ms. Linn’s impassioned argument against media violence — and against the National Rifle Association — is surely well intentioned, but several underlying assumptions weaken her case. Ms. Linn does not differentiate between forms of representational violence. In the same way that an actual gunshot to the face is significantly different from a punch in the […]

Ravi Ramamurti, director of the Center for Emerging Markets at Northeastern University, believes talk about the death of China as an export powerhouse is “vastly exaggerated.” While China has become less competitive in low-end manufacturing, it is still one of the best the places for multi-component products, such as Apple Inc.’s (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPhones, Ramamurti […]

Never underestimate the power of Facebook. That’s what Ryan Cordell found out when his five children posted a picture holding this sign “Hi World! We want a puppy! Our dad said we could get one if we get 1 million likes. So like this!” Then off to the side, “He doesn’t think we can do […]

In the traditional law school classroom — the kind you saw on The Paper Chase, the kind you read about in One L — professors instruct solely by relentlessly asking intimidating questions. It’s a counterintuitive approach. And yet almost without fail, the professors’ highly directed questions elicit from the students themselves the essential principles behind […]