Bridging the Social Science Gap

Harvard is home to some of the world’s greatest minds on the subject of education. We have experts on the history and economics of education, education policy, pedagogy, primary schools, higher education, and educational endowments—just to name a few areas. Unfortunately, these scholars are scattered across a variety of departments within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Kennedy School of Government, the Business School, and, of course, the Education School.

The same goes for many other topics in the social sciences—from urban studies to racial discrimination, inequality to immigration, and health policy to corporate governance—that draw into the mix several other schools, including the Law School, the Design School, and the School of Public Health. The potential for synergies and interdisciplinary research across these rarely-traversed boundaries boggles the mind.

Hence our elation that University President Drew G. Faust has decided to create a University-wide social sciences task force to promote greater integration among Harvard’s far-flung social-science resources. Faust told The Crimson that she hopes this will encourage collaboration and foster the creation of a “support system” for social scientists.

This is not the first time in recent years that the University has responded to the increased importance of interdisciplinary study in academia by reevaluating its structure of decentralized departments and schools. Indeed, the planned committee is modeled in mandate and design on the highly successful University Planning Committee for Science and Engineering (UPCSE).

Since UPCSE issued its final report last December, progress has been swift. In January, the Corporation created a permanent University Science and Engineering Committee and created a $50 million fund for it to work with. Last April, the Harvard’s first cross-school department—the Department of Developmental and Regenerative Biology—was created based on UPCSE’s recommendation. And UPCSE’s work remains at the top of the University-wide agenda. Indeed, in a letter to the entire University community last month, Faust mentioned interdisciplinary integration in the sciences as one of the most important strokes in her sketch of the academic year to come.

Fortunately, Faust has recognized that there is no reason to limit departmental integration to the sciences. As Malkin Professor of Public Policy and former dean of the Kennedy School of Government Robert D. Putnam told The Crimson, Harvard “underplays its assets in the social sciences because of the divisions across the schools and across departments.” Just as physicists or chemists can benefit from shared labs and research, so too can economists or sociologists gain from pooled resources for survey design and data collection. Perhaps more importantly, emphasis on interdisciplinary work helps create a culture of collaboration that prevents faculty from feeling that their work must fall into narrow and in some cases arbitrary departmental categories.

Harvard has long hued to the mantra of “every tub on its own bottom”—that is that each faculty, school, and department is largely autonomous. But with the growing importance of interdisciplinary research, that model has serious limitations. It’s refreshing that the University is working to create a more viable system for the future.