Report Suggests New Curriculum

A new report completed by five members of the Harvard College Curricular Review’s Committee on General Education outlines a coherent set of requirements that would replace the Core with a framework of general education for the next generation of Harvard students based around three areas of study.

The 48-page report was authored by the “Gang of Five”, a name applied to the group by Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby, who has led the curricular review from its inception.

Fisher Professor of Natural History and Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences Andrew Knoll, Saltonstall Professor of History Charles S. Maier ’60, Bass Professor of English and American Literature and Language Louis Menand, Bass Professor of Government Michael J. Sandel, and Professor of Philosophy Alison Simmons met and drafted the new document without the full committee over the summer.

The report recommends replacing the Core’s 11 fields of study with three broader disciplines—Arts and Humanities, Study of Societies, and Science and Technology. Students would be required to take three courses in each of the two areas most distinct from their concentration.

The report also contains sample syllabi for broad new classes, called “portal” courses. These year-long classes would fulfill the entire requirement for a given general education area, in place of three semester courses.

Though the report has only been released to members of the committee, a copy of the report was viewed by The Crimson last week.

Arguing that academia has become more “porous,” the report advocates fewer core divisions in light of the ways that different areas of study overlap, and also calls for students to have greater freedom in choosing their classes.

The report comes over two years after the Curricular Review’s Committee on General Education first met. The Committee on General Education is the last of six Curricular Review Committee to issue a report to the full faculty. A previous draft report by the committee was distributed to the Faculty Council in March, but was never released to the full faculty, after it encountered significant criticism for lacking a guiding vision.

Faculty Council member and Classics Department Chair Richard F. Thomas anticipates that this report will be better received.

“I don’t imagine for a minute that it will look like [the previous draft report],” Thomas said. “It sounds to me

like the sort of document that will indeed be ready for discussion by the faculty, in their function as attendees of [Faculty] meetings and as members of their individual departments.”

Robert M. Bass Professor of English Louis Menand, one member of the “Gang of Five,” stressed that the draft is still being revised and changed.

“The document [seen by the Crimson] is the working document of a group that has yet to meet,” Menand said. “Whatever it says…is completely provisional.”

Several committee members, including Professor of the History of Science and of African and African American Studies Evelynn M. Hammonds, Watts Professor of Music and Professor of African and African American Studies Kay K. Shelemay, and Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of Comparative Literature Diana Sorensen, said they have yet to read the report.

All 14 members and two ex-officio members of the Committee on General Education—the two student members of the committee have graduated—plan to meet on Friday at the Harvard Faculty Club to discuss the report.

“If it goes well from the point of view of the committee coming to agreement I’m assuming it will then go to the faculty council next,” Menand said. “But that’s really up to the dean.”

It is unknown when the full faculty, which meets this afternoon for their first meeting of the academic year, will see a report from the committee.

“What the faculty ultimately votes on is a set of rules for students,” Thomas said.

—Staff writer Allison A. Frost can be reached at afrost@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer William C. Marra contributed to the reporting of this article.