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.