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Focus on Duke
Over the past year, Duke has become better known for its sex scandals than for its academics. Its faculty has likewise earned a reputation not for intellectual excellence, but for a rabid readiness to use certain students (privileged, white, male athletes) to promote a political agenda in the absence of facts (the Group of 88 readily declared the accused lacrosse players--and, by extension, the entire team--guilty of charges that have since failed to stand up to examination).
But there are some very good things happening at Duke, and they deserve due notice. John Locke Foundation president John Hood summarizes some of the innovative and immensely constructive curricular moves that Duke has undertaken in recent years. Hood's article reviews a new Pope Center study centered on how Duke has approached what are commonly seen as the "two great failings" of American higher education: the lack of a strong core curriculum, and the lack of intellectual diversity.
Duke is addressing the first problem through its Focus program, and the second through its Gerst program.
Focus brings together professors from a variety of disciplines to teach a theme of academic content. The 30 participating freshmen take two of four classes in the Focus theme, plus a special writing seminar. The students also live together in a common dormitory and meet weekly with the faculty and a guest speaker to share a meal and thought-provoking conversation. For example, 30 Duke freshmen recently formed a Focus group on the theme of "Global Islam."At big universities, undergraduates are often given a sprawling course guide, an elastic set of curriculum requirements, and a reclusive or incompetent faculty adviser. Then they are urged to "go get an education." For many, the result is a mess. They don't have the shared experience of studying a core curriculum in the arts and sciences. In choosing classes, many gravitate towards the trivial and the easy. The Focus program offers an orderly, rigorous alternative to the chaos -- a popular alternative, with nearly a third of all Duke students now participating in some form.
The second great failing in American higher education ... is a "lack of viewpoint diversity." Based on survey research, it's fair to say that in most departments faculty members who would identify themselves as left of center outnumber right-of-center faculty by nine to one. In certain departments, usually social sciences, the ratio is as high as 16 to 1. In others -- usually hard sciences, professional schools or economics -- the ratio is sometimes lower.
If the political predilections of the faculty stayed outside the classroom, this wouldn't be a major problem. Unfortunately, that's not what happens. Ideas and works from conservative, free-market, or conventionally religious scholars receive less attention, and are often openly mocked by teachers. Sometimes, these teachers use the classroom to lecture students on political or social topics far afield from the course. Although the propaganda doesn't stick as much as the tenured radicals would like -- in part because of general student inattention, I'm afraid -- it still provides a warped picture of politics and intellectual life. For students looking just to make a grade on their way to a degree and a career, the prospect of disagreeing can be scary.
Duke's Gerst program is a promising corrective. Named after Gary Gerst, a philanthropist and Duke alumnus, it doesn't simply try to set up a conservative echo chamber in a corner of a liberal concert hall. It seeks to ensure a true diversity of opinions in its faculty, coursework, readings and public lectures. For example, a Focus theme conducted by the Gerst program on "Recent Visions of Freedom" included a course on the Locke-Mill-Jefferson tradition of classical liberalism and a course on criticism of this tradition by Marxists, fascists, poststructuralists, and other radicals.
Duke's Focus and Gerst programs are wonderful illustrations of how one university has arrived at a responsible definition of what constitutes a meaningful undergraduate experience. If more colleges and universities would act in similarly proactive ways--undertaking essential curricular reform in a manner that suits institutional individuality and respects academic freedom--there would be a lot less danger of lawmakers getting involved in regulating higher education.
ACTA has long encouraged universities to undertake just the sorts of independent, creative measures that Duke is taking. More schools ought to follow suit.
Posted by acta online at March 21, 2007 11:02 AM
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