Liberal Smarts

In his recent anti-Harvard diatribe in the Atlantic Monthly, Ross G. Douthat ’02 writes: “As in a great library ravaged by a hurricane, the essential elements of a liberal arts education lie scattered everywhere at Harvard, waiting to be picked up. But little guidance is given on how to proceed with that task….I chose my classes as much by accident as by design.”

Though I do not necessarily subscribe to the idea that wide student choice in class selection is harmful, I sympathize with Douthat’s point—it can actually be difficult to graduate from Harvard with the basics of a liberal arts education.

Some students simply don’t bother to look for one, instead dutifully completing their Core and concentration requirements in the most painless way possible. But for those of us who actively search for the courses that will change the way we think about ourselves and the world, the essential question looms—in only eight semesters, how do you construct a liberal arts education with just a course catalog, a CUE Guide and a vague notion of what you need to know?

Many Harvard undergraduates, it seems, go horribly off track right off the bat with the College’s perennial favorites. First years endure backaches courtesy of Sanders Theatre’s wooden benches to snooze through Ec 10. Others slip through the cracks in worthy—but huge—classes such as Justice. Still others confuse remote, if interesting, subject matter for the foundational ideas they seek (ahem, Fairy Tales, ahem).

I came to Harvard looking for two types of classes. The first were courses in advanced Russian. The second were those that would give me the intellectual tools in the humanities and the social sciences I needed to think critically about the world in which we live. You know, something resembling a liberal arts education. I didn’t find what I was looking for in any of the perennial favorites.

Other than Justice, there is not a class on campus universally recognized to offer its students a transformative intellectual experience through the introduction of basic ideas and texts. I don’t want to tread far into great-books territory in this column, but just in case you are looking to read a few great books or wrap your mind around a few influential ideas, here are three classes I have taken over the last eight semesters that deserve Sanders Theatre status for the way they develop students’ intellectual capacity and provide the general information necessary to engage in the major debates of our time.

Government 1780, International Political Economy. If you can stand a dose of hard grading, this class will teach you more about globalization than, well, Globalization. Stanfield Professor of International Peace Jeffry Frieden and truly excellent TFs provide four, count ’em, four theoretical approaches to understanding the interaction between politics and economics on a global scale. What I really loved about this class is that you didn’t need a strong background in math or economics to take it, but students still read contemporary scholarship, not a Readers’ Digest-like summary of it in a textbook.

History 20a, Western Intellectual History: Greco-Roman Antiquity. I know what you’re thinking; I didn’t expect ancient philosophy had any bearing on contemporary history before I took the course either. But the ideas of Plato and Aristotle still loom large in the Western intellectual tradition. You can’t really understand anything from the categorical imperative to the Council of Trent without knowing Plato and Aristotle. Besides, this class is great for cocktail parties, as long as you don’t mind being that guy who quotes both Epicurus and Zeno of Citium in the same sentence.

Social Analysis 72, Economics: A Critical Approach. Far from the uber-liberal gut many were expecting, Barker Professor of Economics Stephen A. Marglin successfully (and stressfully) crams all of Ec 10 into a semester, adds new material from Ec 1010a and 1010b, and offers criticism of economics as a discipline. The economics is essential background, but just as important is the need to question the foundational assumptions of the discipline—and, indeed, the fundamental assumptions of modernity in the West.

After almost four years here, I can’t say I have made all the right choices during shopping period. But, unlike Douthat in his essay, I don’t blame Harvard. One of the College’s greatest strengths is the diversity of academic opportunities it affords its students. Giving undergraduates latitude to shape their academic experiences means that even the best of them will make mistakes (unless, of course, you take my shopping advice). At least this way, it’s our fault when we don’t get the education we want.

Stephen W. Stromberg ’05 is a Russian Studies concentrator in Adams House. His column appears on alternate Fridays.