Engendering Gen Ed

Harvard’s Faculty Room is often cited as one of the most impressive spaces on campus, and it is easy to see why. Chandeliers hang from the ceiling, light shines in through the windows, and the busts and portraits of Harvard legends line the walls. Located on the second floor of University Hall, the room has been renovated to look identical to the way it was 100 years ago, when former University President Charles W. Eliot, Class of 1853, presided over Faculty meetings.

English Professor Louis Menand recalled feeling thrilled when the Harvard Faculty finally approved the new curriculum at the last Faculty meeting of the 2006-2007 academic year. Menand, who helped author the Report of the Task Force on General Education, said that almost the entire room—168 professors, to be exact—raised their hands as the Secretary of the Faculty counted the votes. At that meeting, the Faculty moved to eliminate the nearly 30-year-old Core program and implement the new Gen Ed curriculum over a period of two years.

Now—nearly two years later—Dean of Undergraduate Education Jay M. Harris leans back in his chair and crosses his arms. His sparsely decorated office marks a striking contrast to the Faculty Room just a floor above. The walls are bare. As I interview him, my eyes fall upon Eliot’s Harvard Classics series on a small gray bookshelf nearby, their gold letters glittering against the red binding.

On an adjacent bookshelf I see “General Education in a Free Society”—more commonly known as the Red Book, Harvard’s famous 1945 treatise that changed the face of American education.

I point to the books. When I mention the Harvard Classics to Harris, he emphasizes that the names of many of these authors no longer ring a bell. Tastes change. So do curricula. And so do the people in charge of implementing academic programs.



HARRIS AT THE HELM

In the summer 2007, Harris was appointed chair of the newly formed Standing Committee on General Education. Already chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and instructor of a popular Core course, Moral Reasoning 54: “If There is No God, All Is Permitted,” Harris had a significant stake in the trajectory of General Education. The Gen Ed committee is responsible for soliciting and approving prosposals for new courses and departmental alternatives. And, as chair of the committee, Harris was charged with translating the ideals of the final report into a workable curriculum.

As Faculty enthusiasm remains low and Harvard’s resources diminish, the fall 2009 launch date looms. The Gen Ed program now appears more difficult to implement than the Faculty may have anticipated.



CURRICULA: A REVIEW 

Harvard is known as a college that holds fast to its traditions. When the Harvard Corporation voted to change the calendar in 2007—after significant pressure from the Undergraduate Council—it was only the second time in Harvard’s 373-year history that the University had done so. The last time that the calendar had changed was in 1838.

But occasionally, there are those titans who do away with tradition and help shape history. One of Harvard’s greatest figures was President Eliot, who governed the University from 1869 to 1909. He expanded the student body and eliminated the College’s fixed curriculum of Latin, Greek, logic, and other prescribed subjects, replacing it with a free-for-all elective system. Of academic subjects, he said, “We would have them all, and at their best.”

The president who succeeded Eliot—Abbott Lawrence Lowell, Class of 1877—moved away from Eliot’s elective system, instead requiring students to declare concentrations. In the search for order, Lowell turned to specialization—not general education.

It was not until World War II that Harvard established a general education curriculum. University President James B. Conant ’14 vested then-Dean of the Faculty Paul H. Buck with an epic task: to chair a committee that would reevaluate secondary and higher American education. The new initiative involved promoting and preserving democratic ideals. The resulting manifesto, the Red Book, not only proposed an answer for how to mold students into educated citizens, but also how to mold a more cohesive world community. Thousands of copies were disseminated across the United States, and the nation noticed.

It took several years, however, for the grand treatise to be implemented at Harvard—in the form of Harvard’s first General Education program. But when it did make it into the course catalogs, its introductory lower-level courses excited many.

History Professor Charles S. Maier ’60 recalled taking Social Sciences 2: “Western Thought and Institutions”—a kind of predecessor to Social Studies 10: “Introduction to Social Studies,” which required readings like Weber and Rousseau.

While at first, Gen Ed’s required lower-level classes in the Humanities and Social Sciences, such as Social Sciences 2, would cover a broad array of thought—like the definition of love by different philosophers—they eventually devolved into more specialized classes, like Humanities 25: “Civilization of Continental and Island Portugal.” Gen Ed’s middle-level courses—which could be replaced with two departmental alternatives for each slot—were even more specialized.

After almost 25 years, then-Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovsky called for a reevaluation of the current system. After much debate, the Faculty moved to eliminate the first Gen Ed program and establish the Core.

While the first Gen Ed focused on categories of thought, the Core asked students to think strictly within a discipline.

Many Harvard professors said that college curricula need renewal every generation. Menand explained that over time, as small modifications accumulate, the Faculty loses track of the overall objectives of the curriculum. That is when it is time to begin anew.

So, about a quarter-century later, University President Lawrence H. Summers decided it was time to evaluate the curriculum again. As specialized courses infiltrated the Core Curriculum, the program became more difficult to define. The Faculty then decided to return to the interdisciplinary study that the first Gen Ed program espoused.

“The Red Book defined Harvard to the whole country for a period of 20 years,” said former Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68, who graduated under the first Gen Ed curriculum. “The Harvard Faculty actually thought they were doing something important for the world by teaching these kinds of courses. There’s nothing in the air of that kind now.”

As the Gen Ed committee searches for new classes to incorporate into its program next year, professors worry that loopholes in the new curriculum’s structure may allow for specialized courses that deviate from the ideal of a general education. “The structure is the same, of course,” said Gross, “because institutions are comfortable with what they’re used to.”



THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT SUMMERS

Professors say that when then-University President Summers officially launched the curricular review in 2002, he aspired to leave his mark on Harvard.

“He wanted something that would be a legacy for him...that would really look like he had put his stamp on it,” said former Government Professor Lisa L. Martin, who worked with Summers on the original Curricular Review Steering Committee in 2003-2004 and now teaches at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “I think that was really important to him.”

But according to some professors, that ambition may have undermined his ability to work with others.

Maier, who also served on the committee, said that Summers did not realize that regularly voicing his own opinions was stifling the discussion. “When the president intervenes in something like this, he comes with more than his voice,” Maier said. “He comes with his office.”

A tug-of-war ensued, between Summers, then-Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby, and then-Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross, and amongst the members of the committee.

Professors said that even toward the beginning, the curricular review was slowed by a lack of compromise, as professors wanted to make sure that there was a place for them.

“Whenever we’d propose a program, they’d say, ‘Where’s my course?’” Gross said.

Philosophy Professor Alison Simmons, who co-chaired the later committee that produced the final Gen Ed legislation, agreed. “Nobody was in charge of the discussion,” she said. “It was like a section that’s a free-for-all.”

Between 2004 and 2006, with 12 other committees exploring different areas of the undergraduate experience, and no one clearly in charge of the main Gen Ed committee, progress was slow. In January 2006, the committee finally agreed on a distribution requirement that would include all classes in the FAS course catalog, Simmons said, because it was simply the only thing they could agree on: a “common denominator.”

“It seemed the least aggressive,” Simmons said. “It seemed it would make the most people happy—or at least the fewest people unhappy.”

But not everyone would be pleased with the compromise.



BOK IS BACK

In March 2006, incoming interim University President Derek C. Bok called together a group of around ten professors from the Committee on General Education, including the future architects of the new General Education program—Menand and Simmons. These professors sat in a Loeb House conference room, where the Harvard Corporation meets to decide the direction of the University.

After Summers and Kirby resigned, one right after the other, Bok thought it was time to reevaluate the direction of the curricular review.

“He yelled at us,” Menand said. “He felt that we could do better, and this was not up to Harvard’s standards.”

Bok said in a recent phone interview that when he took over, he feared that the curricular review might die. It was of the utmost importance to sustain the committee’s momentum.

Until then, a 26-member Gen Ed committee had taken three years to produce their proposal—one, professors say, that did not excite much of the Faculty. Bok wanted to start over. He appointed a more manageable nine-person committee who started from scratch.

With that goal in mind, the new Task Force—co-chaired by Menand and Simmons—produced a piece of legislation that met Bok’s expectations. After releasing their initial report in October 2006, they visited departments to discuss the proposal and then released a revised report in February 2007 to be reviewed by the full Faculty.

Participants at those Faculty meetings agree that the next four months were characterized by turf battles—professors jockeying to make sure that their discipline would find its place in Gen Ed.

“It’s a herding cats kind of operation in FAS,” Menand said. “The Faculty is filled with people who are accustomed to doing their own thing.”

According to Menand, he and the rest of the Task Force decided to withdraw from the discussion at that point, since they wanted the Faculty to feel as though the curriculum was theirs.

Lewis said that, as temporary leaders, Bok and interim Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles were unwilling to substantially shape the discussions.

“This curriculum happened through a democratic process, but it’s the kind of democracy you’d have in Congress if neither the President nor the party leadership was around,” Lewis said. The Faculty revised the legislation line by line during meetings.

Even so, not all Faculty members felt as though they had the chance to make the curriculum their own.

“[The legislation] was really this sort of thing that we were given that we had to modify,” said Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Professor David A. Haig, who added he would have preferred to see a distribution requirement. “I thought there was never any real serious bit of philosophical discussions of the pros and cons of different forms of general education.”

But if there was anyone to make sure that the review kept going, it was Bok.

Since Bok had decided to take on the presidency for a second time without being paid, and he himself had overseen the creation of the Core Curriculum, his determination to finish the curricular review was “this sort of heroic thing,” according to Menand.

If Bok wanted Gen Ed passed by the end of his term as president, it was going to get passed.



GEN ED FOR DUMMIES

What is Gen Ed? For some students, the answer to this question remains unclear.

The only reference to Gen Ed Elizabeth R. Holly ’12 could remember happened during freshman week. Her academic adviser did not know much about the new program either, though she assured Holly that more information would come.

Six months later, according to Holly, that information has yet to arrive.

Unlike the Core, Gen Ed does not exempt students from any of its categories. All Harvard students, starting with the class of 2013, must take courses in all eight categories: Aesthetic and Interpretive Understanding, Culture and Belief, Empirical and Mathematical Reasoning, Ethical Reasoning, Science of Living Systems, Science of the Physical Universe, Societies of the World, and the United States in the World.

Back in his office, Harris describes the philosophy behind the Gen Ed program. “Students really need to be able to situate themselves in traditions of culture, evaluate data-driven claims, display scientific literacy, engage the world ethically,” he says.

What will set this curriculum apart from previous ones may be the extent to which Gen Ed courses tie the subject matter to students’ lives outside of the classroom.

Harris adds that Gen Ed aims “to connect what students learn to their lives outside of college, most emphatically not in the vocational sense.”

The curricular review, however, set out to change more than just the curriculum. The Faculty also approved the creation of secondary fields, expanded the Advising and Freshman Seminar Programs, and transformed study abroad from a taboo practice to a full-fledged program that is common, encouraged, and well funded.



STUDENTS’ SAY

Many students at Harvard seem to prefer a distribution requirement, which would provide students with more freedom in their course selection.

“As soon as you allocate Core classes, everyone’s just going to look for the easiest one,” said William A. Scott ’10, an Engineering concentrator in Leverett House.

Joan Xu ’11 said that she sees a distribution requirement as an opportunity to avoid the “fake [Quantitative Reasoning] courses that professors don’t take seriously and students know are there just to fulfill a requirement.”

In their own way, the new Gen Ed categories are broad enough to give professors the leeway to teach the subject matter they want. But with a limited selection of departmental alternatives, student choice may remain narrow.

In the meantime, freshmen are relatively uninformed about the change.

“I don’t think I’ve received any information on [Gen Ed],” said Charlotte C.L. Chang ’12, a freshman in Greenough Hall. “I think I may have received an e-mail or two about it, but I don’t know what it is.”



THE PRESSURE IS ON

On paper and in Task Force meetings Menand and Simmons’s legislation seemed like the answer to Bok’s expectations. But now, as Gen Ed’s launch date approaches, translating the ideals of general education into a workable program presents unexpected challenges.

As of February 26, 2009, only 81 courses have been approved for Gen Ed credit, and most of them have been carried over as existing department or Core classes.

According to Director of Undergraduate Studies Jeffrey A. Miron, the Economics department, Harvard’s largest, has no plans to develop any new Gen Ed classes. Instead, they are hoping to get two departmental classes approved. This approach is not uncommon across departments.

As Dean of the Faculty Michael D. Smith recently slashed the number of searches for visiting professors and ladder faculty in light of the economic downturn, departments will be hard pressed to support their existing courses next year—let alone create new Gen Ed courses.

In the meantime, demand for Gen Ed classes in the next few years is guaranteed to be high.

More than 1,600 incoming freshmen will fall under Gen Ed this September, and College administrators say that they expect nearly half of rising sophomores to choose Gen Ed over the Core. Older students are also likely to jockey for newly created Gen Ed classes, since they also count toward the Core.

But in spite of increased demand, the Gen Ed committee is finding it difficult to recruit professors to teach within the new program.

Some professors have said that they would like to see Faust and Smith taking action to recruit new classes.

“It’s important for the deans—especially for Dean Smith and for President Faust—to get out front on this issue and help to beat the drums for it,” Menand said. “Just so people understand what we’re doing and why it’s innovative.”

Menand remembered feeling excited when Bok invited 15 professors who helped guide the curricular review to a celebratory dinner in Loeb House. They celebrated the conclusion of the review process in the same building where Bok had chewed them out, a little over a year earlier. A string quartet played music. Menand presented Bok with a shirt that said, “BOK,” on the back and, “168-14-11” on the front—the final vote.

But professors now worry about whether Gen Ed will even be ready to launch next fall.

“I haven’t given up hope they can launch Gen Ed with a bang,” Simmons said. “I haven’t given up hope. It’s a slightly dimmer hope, but I think it can still happen.”

Meanwhile, members of the Gen Ed committee have been working hard to get Gen Ed off the ground.

Tomorrow is the official deadline for Gen Ed course offerings to be printed in the 2009-2010 course catalog. The clock is ticking.



—Kate A. Borowitz and Noah S. Rayman contributed to the reporting of this story.