Seminar Promotes Public Service Effort

While some students hit the books, others hit the street.

This semester students in Social Studies 98fu, “Practicing Democracy” have been saving churches, trying to build libraries and garnering support for gay marriage.

The course head, Lecturer in Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government Marshall C. Ganz ’92, says that with 10 hours of field work combined with readings and a two-hour section each week, “Practicing Democracy” is not a normal class.

“It’s not a seminar for the faint-hearted,” he says.

Ganz, a former activist himself, spent 16 years organizing for the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez.

Students cite his real world experience as integral to both his philosophy and what they call his relaxed yet structured teaching style.

Ganz left Harvard College in 1963 before finishing his degree, only returning 28 years later to graduate, receive a Ph.D. at the Kennedy School and begin to teach.

Following Ganz’s leadership, “Practicing Democracy” stresses the importance of collective action as a cornerstone of democracy.

Ganz says the class, which meets on Tuesday nights and involves eight students, teaches participants to be in tune with the wishes and resources of the groups they are trying to help.

“Democracy is not just about protection of liberties but about the power to combine,” he says.

Ganz says that his class is not overly concerned with whether or not the students’ specific projects succeed.

Instead, he says, their undertakings serve as a forum in which the students can apply what they have learned from readings, discussions and each other.

“The practical problems of the world are complicated. It isn’t until you get into the solving that you learn,” Ganz says.

Students say the class’s heavy workload is mostly due to the time they devote to their individual projects. The projects include efforts to create a Diabetic Students Association at Harvard, to save a Dorchester church that is in danger of being shut down and to work for the reform of the Catholic Church in the wake of sexual abuse scandals.

Although students say that it is possible to get by in the class with minimal effort, they observed that all of their classmates have become increasingly invested in their projects.

“If there’s something that important why not devote that much time?” says Joy C. Lin ’05, who is working with the Chinese Progressive Association to lobby for a library for Chinatown.

She says Chinatown is one of the most densely populated areas in Boston—but one of the few that doesn’t have a library.

Andrew M. Crespo ’05 says that Ganz has turned the class into a “supportive network” where students inspire and console each other.

In weekly presentations, students describe their project’s obstacles and progress while drawing from the week’s reading for analytical background.

Students say these presentations foster a sense of solidarity among the classmates and allow them to enlist the help of others when solving problems.

“A whole new range of possibilities opens up every time somebody shares something,” Lin says.

Readings in the class range from standard social theory such as Max Weber to the Bible and personal narratives.

Ganz says these produce a framework through which students can understand their own successes and failures.

“It’s the most coherent bunch of readings I’ve had for any class,” Crespo says. “The amazing thing about the reading is that it all flows together. “

Students are overwhelming enthusiastic about the class and Ganz himself.

“He’s definitely the perfect person to be teaching the class,” says Crespo, who is working with Neighborhood of Affordable Housing, or NOAH, a community development program that is attempting to organize housing committees in neighborhoods in East Boston to combat problems like crime and graffiti.

Despite Ganz’s expertise in political action, students describe his teaching style as relaxed.

“I feel like it’s one of the best classes I’ve taken,” Lin says.

—Staff writer Nadia Oussayef can be reached at oussayef@fas.harvard.edu.