Excellence Without a Soul?

The Task Force on General Education appears to have experienced a crisis of faith. The “reason and faith” requirement, which had been the boldest and most talked about element of the original report, was summarily consigned to whatever afterlife there may be for dead curriculum proposals.

This is highly unfortunate. Religious illiteracy is the norm at our largely secular campus, making it almost impossible for Harvard to converse with a religious world. Furthermore, forgoing the reason and faith requirement will perhaps irretrievably confirm the pragmatic, utilitarian ethos of the task force’s vision for Harvard education, banishing rigorous thought about meaning, purpose, and life’s ultimate questions to an academic never-never land.

The problem of religious literacy is so great that it is oftentimes not even recognized. Ask yourself: How many Harvard students can explain the difference between a Shiite and a Sunni? How many understand why most Americans reject Darwinian evolution? Probably—and sadly—not many. But this sort of knowledge is essential to understand today’s world. Religion is not, as Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology Steven Pinker wrote, an “American anachronism.” If anything, it is Harvard that needs explaining in our persistently religious global society.

But while the original report did well to address the issue of religious literacy, it unfortunately did so in a spirit of pragmatism and anti-intellectualism. The Task Force’s underlying rationale for general education can be summed up in three words: real-world citizenship. Perhaps reflecting the pragmatic worldview of the task force co-chair and Bass Professor of English and American Literature and Language Louis Menand, they have taken the focus off of academics and directed it instead towards real-life application and civic duty.

There is of course some good in this, and the common-sense proposals to teach American history and public speaking should be cheered. But for those who think education ought to be about more than civics, their ideas are disappointing.

Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science and former dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 scathingly criticized Harvard’s curriculum in his book “Excellence Without a Soul.” “Harvard teaches students,” he writes, “but does not make them wise.” Later, he writes that, “Harvard articulates no ideals of what it means to be a good person, as opposed to a well person.” Lewis’ point is that a Harvard education should teach us how to be wise and good, rather than simply clever and contented.

Unfortunately, the task force seems to have forgotten that education is about more than just amassing useful facts. While facts will help students be successful and participate in democracy, a truly liberal education ought to address deeper questions. In that sense, the task force’s real-world citizenship rationale only goes so far. It does not provoke us to think deeply about why we ought to be good citizens, parents, lawyers, artists, or, for that matter, anything at all.

A Harvard education, however, can and should be so much more than pragmatic. At its core, a liberal arts education ought to ask the why questions that lie buried at the heart of a university, giving direction and purpose to the human quest for knowledge. The original report nodded in this direction by noting that many Harvard students are religious, and often struggle to sort out what they believe. The task force’s latest idea—a vaguely-stated “what it means to be a human being” requirement—seems to be reaching towards this realization, but it looks to have been tacked on as an afterthought, not fully understood even by its proponents.

If done right, the new “what it means to be human” requirement actually holds great potential to ameliorate the report’s anti-intellectual pragmatism. The search for truth, meaning, and purpose is something that all students have in common, and this quest belongs at the center of any truly humane education. Sadly, these questions have largely been abandoned by universities, leaving students to search for meaning themselves through chaplaincies, counseling services, and late-night dorm room bull sessions.

That is why the report’s maligned religion requirement was actually the most important. More than simply helping us understand our persistently religious world, it could have become an urgently needed space for rigorous thought about what the late Harvard philosopher and University Professor Paul Tillich called life’s ultimate questions—in short, about veritas.

We hope that the new “what it means to be human” requirement will become more than a vague addendum, and grow to comprehend a wide variety of courses from across Harvard that address ultimate questions of truth, meaning, and purpose. Faith traditions like Christianity have much to teach us in this regard, and should not be neglected in this new proposed component. Many Harvard classes, like Wolfson Professor of Jewish Studies Jay M. Harris’ Moral Reasoning 54: “If There Is No God, All Is Permitted,” already take on these concerns. They are perennially oversubscribed, showing that these sorts of classes are precisely what students are asking for yet seldom receive.

Lewis ends his book with a line that could not be more fitting, quoting the beloved former Dean of Students, Archie C. Epps III: “Harvard can again inspire its students to develop a philosophy of life that brings dignity and honor to human affairs if it signals those values in everything it does.” It is our hope and, dare we say it, our prayer that Harvard will do so, keeping its excellence while regaining its soul.



Jordan L. Hylden ’06 is a junior fellow at First Things magazine. Jordan D. Teti ’08 is a government concentrator in Kirkland House.