Haverford College

08/28/2026

Burial or cremation? Katrina Spade '99 says there's a third way. 🌱

In 2020, after leading the charge to legalize “natural organic reduction,” she opened Recompose — the country's first human composting facility. Lay a body on straw and woodchips, wait two months, and natural processes turn it into a cubic yard of rich soil. No caskets. No concrete vaults. No carbon-heavy cremation.

700+ people composted. 14 states and counting where it's now legal. One very determined Ford behind it all.

"I almost don't care if they decide to choose cremation in the end," Spade says. "I love that the conversation is happening."

Read her full story at hav.to/12zh.

The visionary architect and designer is helping us move beyond the binary of burial or cremation and changing our relationship to death — one composted body at a time.

08/27/2026

What a day! The Class of 2030 is officially on campus.

Families lugged boxes and helped set up dorm rooms. The newest Fords met their Customs teams who will help guide them through their first year. At Convocation, they signed the Honor Code, joining a community built on trust, concern, and respect.

Welcome to Haverford, Class of 2030! Here's to the year ahead.

📸 Patrick Montero, Holden Blanco '17, and Paola Nogueras

08/27/2026

Lawyer to legal activist. Copywriter to art educator. Corporate counsel to recovery organizer. Peacebuilder to theater producer. 🎭

Four Fords, four reinventions.

Jessie Kahn-Duve '94 left copywriting to become an art educator, making museum programs accessible to underserved students, blind visitors, and people living with dementia.

John R. Gailey III '76 traded law for recovery advocacy work, made personal after losing his son to an overdose in 2022.

Laura Shipler Chico '94 moved from human rights work in Myanmar and Rwanda to running a London theater company built on "radical empathy."

Jamie Conrad '80 left his law practice in 2024 to defend democracy full-time, alarmed by threats to democratic institutions.

Different paths, same throughline: Haverford values, lived out on their own terms.

Read all four stories at hav.to/130o.

08/25/2026

Fords, while you were away, we made some changes to dining at Haverford. In addition to an all-new menu at the Coop, we’ve also partnered with Dispatch Goods to help phase out single-use containers on campus.

Dispatch Goods’ “chili red” reusable takeout containers are available in the Dining Center and Coop. Just make sure you put them in the correct receptacle when you’re done. A certain someone is always watching … 👀

Learn more at hav.to/134l.

08/24/2026

The Class of 2030 has officially started arriving!

On Friday, our Chesick Scholars kicked off Horizons, their pre-orientation program, while our incoming international students began their own orientation ahead of Customs. Their arrival brought all the classics: overstuffed cars, big hugs, and parents insisting on carrying one more box than they should.

The rest of the Class of 2030 arrives this Wednesday. We can't wait to see you, Fords!

📸 by Paola Nogueras and Holden Blanco '17

08/20/2026

Oscar Turner '29 spent the summer as a student researcher in Professor of Physics and Astronomy Karen Masters' lab, classifying the radiation emitted by different regions within about 11,000 galaxies to determine which are still forming stars and which have gone "quenched."

These are his Field Notes.

08/19/2026

It's World Photography Day and the perfect time to spotlight Ben Bowens '06, who has spent 20 years documenting protests and rallies across Philadelphia. From Black Lives Matter on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway to the "Muslim Ban" at Philadelphia International Airport, he's been there, camera in hand.

"It seems that we're in a cynical world until you show up at a rally in downtown Philadelphia, and there's 80,000 people there," he says.

Read more about Ben and his work in the digital edition of Haverford magazine: hav.to/1300

📸 Holden Blanco '17 (portrait); Ben Bowens '06

08/18/2026

Who actually gets to decide when the U.S. goes to war?

That question stuck with Jonathan Kevorkian '27. Now it's the center of his research as Haverford's newest fellow with the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress. This year, he'll trace how presidents have justified war-making power since the War Powers Act of 1973, through case studies from Iraq and Libya to Grenada, Bosnia, and Iran.

The political science major and history minor will spend the year writing a research paper and presenting it at a leadership conference in Washington, D.C.

Read about his path to the fellowship, including the movie that sparked his interest in presidential power and the talk show he now hosts on WHRC: hav.to/13d8.

📸 by Patrick Montero

08/14/2026

We couldn’t be more excited about the incoming Haverford College Class of 2030! We look forward to welcoming you all home.

08/13/2026

Emma Fauser '29, a prospective computer science major, spent the summer working with Shibulal Family Computer Science Professor Sorelle Friedler on two projects probing how AI shapes decisions most people never see: a public tracker of federal AI systems (govaifiles.org) and a Consumer Reports-backed investigation into algorithmic grocery pricing.

"In a democracy, we want to be able to see what our government's doing," says Fauser. "We want to be able to hold them accountable."

Read more about Fauser's summer research experience: hav.to/1331.

📸 by Patrick Montero