Behind the Cover

We were well into this issue of Harvard Ed. magazine when Harvard President Larry Bacow made the announcement on March 10 that the university would be transitioning to virtual instruction for all classes because of COVID-19. Students moved home, staff started working remotely, faculty geared up for teaching in a new way using Zoom, and on March 18, all buildings on campus were officially shuttered.

This became Harvard’s new normal — a normal that has forced us all to find a new rhythm to the way we work, the way we learn, the way we parent, and the way we stay connected while physically distancing ourselves from one another.

Here on the magazine, we wondered: Should we keep this issue’s content mostly as is, or scrap the whole thing and focus on coronavirus coverage? It’s not easy for a magazine with a long production schedule to cover the news in a timely way so we decided to do both. We replaced the original cover story but kept most of the existing content, with tweaks. Our goal is to look back in a more thoughtful way in the fall. Stay tuned and please, everyone, stay well.