Harvard's faculty voted on and passed a new curriculum yesterday, thus demonstrating that the faculty is not wholly ungovernable and counterproductive. So how come nobody sounds very excited about it?
English prof Jim Engell calls it "an imperfect document." Harry Lewis says that "we have simply missed the opportunity to do the right thing." Bill Kirby, always good for a China joke, said, "“The motion was passed unanimously although many comrades were opposed.”
I haven't thought as much about this as the people involved, but it still seems to me that there's no intellectual theory to this reform other than saying, well, people should take courses in a few important areas, and it'd be swell if they connected to the real world.
The first strikes me as obvious, the second mundane. Is this really the most we can expect from the world's finest university?
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