Curricular Review Must Move Forward

At a moment of such uncertainty and change for Harvard, a single universal truth about the community remains unaffected: that the University’s foremost priority must remain the improvement of the undergraduate experience. University President Lawrence H. Summers’ departure will bring many changes, but the place of undergraduates in the University will be unaltered. As Derek C. Bok resumes his role in Mass. Hall, this undergraduate-prioritizing leader (who championed the cause of undergraduate pedagogy in the 1970s and 1980s) will replace another (who called Harvard College “the very heart of the university” in his 2001 inaugural address).

And if undergraduate issues are indeed a priority to Harvard, then we, Harvard’s undergraduates, must put the rare opportunity presented by the Harvard College Curricular Review before politics. Historically, this sort of opportunity has presented itself once every three decades. Our chance to restructure the curriculum comes once every 30 years regardless of who the president is, regardless of who the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science is, and regardless of which bodies of the University are cooperating. No power vacuum, no matter how large, need stall the reforms of this curricular review (already three years in the making), and with support from deans and faculty—and the support of undergraduates—we can renew reform without pause.

At this point, the review’s first priority should be to eliminate the Core Curriculum. Students and professors are in widespread consensus that the Core is generally impotent and that its philosophies are misguided. Now is our chance to dissolve it and leave something better for posterity (perhaps, if we act quickly enough, for current underclassmen to have the choice between completing their general education curriculum through Core requirements or distributional alternatives). Any hesitation or retreat on this issue will translate only to more generations of Harvard College students encumbered by the same antiquated regime of general education. There is no reason to balk now: ultimately the decision about general education requirements (like most other curricular review decisions) is in the hands of the Faculty, a group that will remain largely unchanged between now and the autumn, and whose discretion and prudence are even-handed enough to finalize this issue in the coming months if presented with that opportunity.

It will also be advantageous to future members of our community to adopt of the recommendation that Harvard develop a system of secondary fields, a more integrative version of minors, in conjunction with the traditional concentration. By expanding undergraduates’ curricular opportunities, the Faculty can use this reform to benefit undergraduates throughout the College. And concentration choice should be delayed until the middle of sophomore so that freshmen are no longer unduly constrained in their course selections.

While some of these proposed reforms seem inconsequential and distant to the undergraduates of the present, others are far more immediate: financial aid should help to pay for summer experiences abroad, and the student earnings expectations for the summertime, which help to determine financial aid packages, should be lowered to permit more summer travel. All of this should be done this very semester and without any delay, because students are as desperate now as they ever will be for more opportunities for the low-income members of our community. This is the right thing to do, and it will remain the right thing whether Summers or Bok or anyone else is president.

Even for those who disagree with the proposals of the curricular review, expediting the process is a welcome goal. After all, even if the priority of the Faculty is, for instance, to keep the Core Curriculum, we are better off having that priority determined than wondering for another year whether the status quo is optimal. Both proponents and dissentients of the reforms must agree that after three years of discussion it is time to hasten our community-wide self-reflection and renewal.

We know the expanse of the review’s possibilities because great strides have already been taken toward certain reforms: this week marks the arrival of the first Associate Dean of Harvard College for Advising Programs, and already this year hundreds of students are beginning to profit from a new interdisciplinary program in the life sciences. These steps can be transformed into galloping leaps in the very near future, and all that is required of us is our passion and will.

Along the way, distractions may make it difficult to maintain focus on the review. Nonetheless, changes in personnel and politics cannot be permitted to derail the priorities of the University. Students remain committed to reforming undergraduate education, as we will show today at a student convention on the revival of the curricular review and as we have already affirmed through hundreds of signatures on a petition to resuscitate the review. Now it is time for everyone involved to act with an equal sense of urgency and steadfastness.



Matthew R. Greenfield ’08, the vice-chair for undergraduate education of the Undergraduate Council Student Affairs Committee, is a government concentrator in Mather House. The Council will host a student convention on the curricular review today at 4:30 p.m. in the Kirkland Junior Common Room.