So when I was an undergraduate at Harvard, I, like many other students, had a lot of problems with the curriculum. In fact, my roommate Nick Josefowitz was directly involved in the famous Curricular Review, which is still going on today. Around graduation time, my buddy Tom Wolf wrote a great essay called "Down with the 'Harvard Man': Owning Our Education Existentially and Pragmatically." I suggested that you guys read this. It's a great essay and identifies a lot of the problems. On the other hand, I must respectfully disagree with Tom's conclusions and indeed with Tom's very emphasis as to the direction of undergraduate education. I will address those disagreements here.

Before I do that, let me begin by stating my biases. Like Tom, I earned my degree in intellectual history. As a result, I know that field best and am more familliar with the humanities in general than I am with the sciences. Indeed, the loudest complaints about Harvard's curriculum seem to come from those in the humanities or social sciences, rather than the hard sciences. I will try to address that issue later on.

But now, to Tom's essay:

Tom argues for three major reforms: 1) changing the Core Curriculum to distribution requirements, 2) reducing departmental requirements, specifically tutorials, 3) a "cultural shift" of the university's self-image, which he later defines as a movement towards a greater emphasis on academics, rather than extra-curricular activities. The ultimate goal is to:

encourage individual perspectives, ideas that have real lasting power specifically because they are one's own, not because they are Harvard's.

In principle, I could not agree more. The reality, however, is that Harvard, like many undergraduate institutions, is fighting a losing battle against anti-intellectualism, careerism and overall student apathy. Tom's reforms are written for students who are, well, like Tom: students who are academically serious and genuinely interested in learning. As Tom correctly laments, these students are growing fewer and fewer in number.

There is something deeper to be addressed when students blow off coursework for other activities that "matter more in the long run anyway." A brief survey of alumni will reveal that most undergraduates do not become professional athletes, actors, writers, or politicians; rather we become lawyers, doctors, bankers and consultants.

Here's the problem: In my experience, in general (there are of course numerous exceptions) the future bankers and consultants, for the most part, don't care much about their studies, or about real learning. If they are academically serious at all, they are interested in maximizing their GPAs. Sadly, the same is often true for future lawyers; doctors usually don't have that luxury.

In his essay, Tom distinguishes between more ambitious and less ambitious students, writing:

The University must ensure that every student receives an education, but it should not confine more ambitious students within a curricular system designed for less ambitious students.

Unfortunately, if ambition is here being equated with academic seriousness and desire for learning, less ambitious students are becoming far more prevalent, possibly even among the majority.

That is why the University must unfortunately take up the task of providing a broad-based liberal arts education to the unambitious masses. This is a greater concern than the the plight of the ambitious students, who usually learn enough anyway.

Then again, under the current system, even ambitious students leave Harvard with tremendous gaps in their knowledge. One can be a very serious history student at Harvard and never actually study a Shakespearean sonnet at the college level. One can be thorouoghly engaged as an English major and never learn about the French Revolution. One can be the most intellectually curious of philosophy students and never examine a Boticelli painting. One can be a serious student in any of the social or hard sciences and never do any of these things.

Harvard will always have students who care more about their extra-curricular activities, be they athletics, journalism, theatre, etc. Harvard will always have students who care about nothing at all. And Harvard will always have students that care only about their discpline and none other. It is for these students, as well as the ambitious ones who may not yet realize the gaps in their knowledge, that Harvard's new Core should be designed.

Fortunately, there a few good models to pattern the new Core after. One is Columbia University's undergraduate Core Curriculum, and another, more obscure example is the Dawson College Liberal Arts Program, which I had the good fortune to attend. Both are essentially expanded great books programs. My vision for Harvard's new Core follows their lead.

Here goes:

First, Harvard should increase its course load from four courses per semester to five. Four is shamefully low, there is no reason to think we can't fit a fifth course in. This increases the overall number of courses from 32 to 40.

Then, Harvard should institute a uniform core curriculum of the following 10 classes:

1 + 2) 2 semesters worth of Western History, roughly the equivalent of History 10a and 10b, Adam to Saddam, so to speak, though including more study of Islam.

3+ 4) 2 semesters of College level Western literature, roughly the equivalent of English 10a and 10b, covering novels, poetry, drama and short fiction, with some non-English works in translation: Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, something of that nature.

5) A History of Science class, covering some ancient and medieval science, the Copernican revolution, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, the mapping of the atom, to current understanding of DNA, genetics, etc.

6) A history of Art and Architecture, with some ancient and modern art but focusing mostly on the Renaissance and Baroque periods.

7) A moral philosophy class, covering big topics like Free Will, morality and theism, Kantian versus Utilitarian Ethics, psychological and ethical egoism, etc.

8) A music class, focusing on classical but also including jazz.

9) A basic class on statistics.

10) An introduction to logic.

In addition to these 10, students will also still be required to take the mandatory expository writing class, as well as a public speaking and debating class (two skills that are often more valuable than writing).

For a foreign cultures requirement, students will be able to choose between several different classes: An African history and culture, East Asian History and Culture, South Asian History and Culture, Islamic History and Culture, Latin American History and Culture, Native Peoples History and Culture.

Students who have taken related AP or college level classes that overlap certain of these new Core elements can potentially earn exemption from classes, though this will probably be infrequent.

Thus, of 40 classes, 13 will be standardized. Of the remaining 27 courses, some 14 to 16 will go towards concetrations, leaving room for a dozen or so electives. In these 27 courses, ambitious students will have ample room to carve out their own individualized curriculum. Concentration tutorials need not be reduced, merely altered: they should have less busywork and a greater emphasis on individual projects and peer editing, culminating in the senior thesis. Indeed, tutorials serve a vital function: they allow students within a given field to get to know each other and to get to know each other's work.

With this revamped system, unambitious students, simply by virtue of attending the odd class or doing the odd reading, will be acquire something that resembles a liberal arts education. Meanwhile, ambitious students will make the most of this Core, acquire an extremely broad education and than further enrich themselves in their concentrations and electives. Humanities and social science students will cover their bases, in addition to learning logic, statistics and the history of science, rather than "Magic with Numbers" or "Dinosaurs and their relatives." Science students will get the same broad liberal arts education, being exposed to Plato, the French Revolution and Renaissance Art, rather than "Heroes of Viking Myth and Sagas" or "Understanding the Samurai." All those more particular interests can be pursued through electives.

The only other way to address the anti-intellectualism that is pervasive at Harvard would be through harsher grading and altering the admissions process. In terms of the latter, I can think of a few things that would help: further increase financial aid, reduce legacy benefits, raise the academic standards for athletes, and move away from the emphasis on choosing and building future "leaders," and instead choose future scholars. The University of Chicago should be a model for admissions. A dean there once said: "We don't care who your grandfather was, how good of a football player you are or whether you know how to hold a fork properly. We care only about your ideas."

Again, this is a losing battle. Harvard, like all universities, will always be cursed with careerism and student apathy. But with this new system, all students will get something of a liberal arts education, and the most serious students will get a very thorough base from which to build their more individualized path of learning, a path that will be all the more rewarding as a result.

So I've changed my mind. Here's what Israel should do. Withdraw from Sheeba farms. Agree to a prisoner exchange. But then, issue this blanket warning. If there is a single rocket attack, or any attack in the future, from Hezbollah, then the Israeli Airforce will turn DAMASCUS into a parking lot.

So Bush made this supposed "gaffe" today when he swore in a private convo with Blair. But this gaffe might have been the smartest thing he ever said about the Middle East in the past 6 years. For those of you who missed it, Bush said:

“See, the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it’s over."

I have no love for Dubya, but I sort of agree with him here. I'm not sure that there is irony involved, or maybe I don't know the context (I was always confused about the definition of irony, and that bloody Alanis Morissette song never helped matters). But everyone's been making a big deal here saying "Hezbollah is not Lebanon" and "Lebanon is not Hezbollah." True enough, and decimating the Lebanese civilian population, Shi'ite, Sunni, Christian or Druze, will not help matters. But people are forgetting a more important equation. Hezbollah is Syria, and Hezbollah is Iran. From a military point of view, striking Hezbollah targets makes sense, and mazel tov to the IAF for destroying an Iranian-made long-range missile today. But to stop Hezbollah, Israel's got to go to the source, and the source is Syria and Iran.

Now, some commentators have postulated that Israel wants the US to strike Iran, in order to prevent the Iranians from going nuclear, and possibly giving nukes to Hezbollah. If that doesn't happen, the IDF might do it on its own. Syria, however, sponsors not only Hezbollah but also Hamas, which though leading the Palestinian Authority right now, is a terrorist organization in its own right. Israel should negotiate with Hamas, should pull out of much of the West Bank and should make life easier for the Palestinians, ultimately leading to a Palestinian State. But Syria does not sponsor the charitable part of Hamas, they sponsor the militant part. Syria does not sponsor Hezbollah's political wing, they sponsor it's military branch. So Syria is a huge source of this mess. When they were forced to withdraw their troops from Lebanon, they maintained a presence in the country through intelligence operatives, and of course, through Hezbollah. Indeed, Hezbollah doesn't just "fill the power vacuum" that was caused when Syria withdrew, they simply represent a different force to act out Syria's interests.

Solutions? I don't know. Sometimes I feel that Israel should just withdraw from Sheeba Farms, release the prisoners and be done with it. But I'm not sure that's wise right now. Syria and Iran have to be dealt with. But how? And by who?

A lot of people don't realize how the Zionist project comes in to play here. Israel was birthed on a rejection of messianism, a do it yourself attitude. The model Sabra has disdain for the image (however, fabricated or accurate this is) of the "sheep to the slaughter" Diaspora Jew who fell pray to Hitler. So, he fights himself. He doesn't wait for US or UN intervention that may never come. An Eye for an Eye. He's hit, he hits back. And that's why Israel feels justified, almost invigorated, in responding to this unprovoked aggression by Hezbollah.

So should Israel strike Syria? I wouldn't be opposed to a strike on Syrian military targets at all.

The worst violence we've seen in a while is going on in Israel right now. Hezbollah has fired rockets from Lebanon that have hit Israeli cities in the north, including Haifa. I briefly lived in Haifa last year. This is very scary. On the one hand, it seems wrong to give in to Hezbollah's demands for prisoner release. On the other hand, Israel may have to take the high road eventually, evacuate from Sheeba Farms and release prisoners too. But it just doesn't seem right in the face of these attacks. Israel no longer occupies Lebanon; the Sheeba farms are technically in Syria, though Syria calls them Lebanese. It's a bit confusing. But the reality is that Israel did not provoke this attack from Hezbollah.

So on July 1st, it was Canada Day. Woohoo. This was easily the least celebrated Canada Day I've ever witnessed. Of course, i am in Quebec, and many Quebeckers don't consider themselves Canadian at all. The week before, it was St. Jean Baptiste Day, Quebec's "national" holiday, and there were Quebecois flags everywhere, but no Canadian ones. But Canada Day was even more incredible. That morning, England played Portugal in soccer. I watched in a neighbourhood in the Plateau with a lot of Portuguese people. There were hundreds of Portuguese flags, but no Canadian ones. But that's sort of what I like about Canada. Our nationalism is so weak, that we allow ethnicities to maintain their ethnic pride. I've always felt way more Jewish than Canadian, and that's a good thing,and I'm glad Canada allows me to do that.