Students encouraged to leave their predispositions at the door and be open to wide, critical debate

In recent decades the humanities and social sciences in many of our universities have declined in substance and stature. “Studies” programs, often ideologically slanted and emphasizing victimhood, and the emergence of postmodern influences, have undermined their importance.

A new program at Harvard University offers hope that these influences may not endure. Known as Genuinely Hard Problems in Science, this first-year seminar (15 students in each class) seeks to develop the interdisciplinary and wide perspectives necessary to investigate big and as yet unanswered questions that have challenged researchers for years. “In this class, there is no assumption that scientific authorities are right. Rather than training conformists … the instructors want out-of-the-box thinkers who can blaze new pathways.” The university’s dean of science, Jeff Lichtman, who, with others, teaches the course, explains that it “seeks to pilot a new approach to a scientific landscape that has been reshaped by technology.”

What would comparable thinking produce in our faculties of arts? What would a first-year seminar seeking to explore the genuinely hard problems in our public lives look like? How would we ensure that its outstanding students leave their predispositions at the door and be open to wide, critical and interdisciplinary perspectives? What questions would be studied? A few examples come quickly to mind: is the West in decline? Does citizenship matter? Will the nation state survive? Are human rights malleable?

The horizons here are not short-term. The course at Harvard is for first-year students, many of whom, we might hope, would continue their studies to advanced levels, refining the critical, interdisciplinary and wide perspectives necessary to address the hard questions, and to ensure they are heard in public policy debates.

The program should stimulate a revisiting of humanities courses (history, philosophy, literature, classics, art, etc.) and the social sciences (psychology, sociology, political science, economics, anthropology etc.) to determine the extent of their capture by ideology, postmodernism and a preoccupation with identity, and to take corrective measures.

Universities are challenged by massification and by appeals for graduates with job-ready skills. The former has produced wider access but at a cost of larger classes and diminished personal contact between professors and students. The latter reminds us that job prospects are often top-of-mind for students and their families, but overlooks the fact that many if not most employers want employees who can see a big picture and ask questions that need to be asked.

The new first-year seminar at Harvard addresses both challenges, and offers hope for the arts as well as the sciences.

Peter MacKinnon OC, KC, is a Senior Fellow with the Aristotle Foundation, a former dean of law, and served as president of the University of Saskatchewan, Athabasca University and Dalhousie University. Photo: iStock