Urban Violence Course Unites Three Disciplines

President Rudenstine and Provost Green talk a lot about encouraging the different parts of Harvard to work together.

That is starting to happen. And an innovative new course now being taught inside venerable Langdell South at Harvard Law School offers a glimpse of both the benefits--and the drawbacks--of University-wide cooperation.

"Urban Violence" is a multidisciplinary examination of a hot topic, Faculty from the Kennedy School of Government, the School of Public-Health and the Law School have come together to teach an important subject that extends beyond the traditional boundaries of any one of Harvard's 10 graduate schools.

Dr. Raphael K. Raphlah, who is auditing the course, knows how important the topic is, Raphlah, a fellow in Preventive Medicine at Carney Hospital, says doctors like himself, who work in urban areas, must encounter such violence every day.

"There are many people who are terrified to go to the hospital parking lot," he says.

Raphlah attends the class in order to explore the different approaches to urban violence offered by the law, public heath and public policy.

"This is one of the few classes that's multidisciplinary," he says. "If you want to solve a problem, you have to get these three main partners to get solutions."

The idea is taking hold. In the course's first year, more than 75 students from the three graduate school boys singed up for the course in the hopes of finding a cross-disciplinary solution to a complex problem.

"This is really an experiment in trying to provoke ourselves to go beyond our boundaries--to examine a problem that has no boundaries," says Touroff-Glueck Professors of Law and Psychiatry Alan A. Stone '50, one of the course's four instructors.

The class is the brainchild of Kennedy School Faculty member Mark H. Moore, Guggenheim professors of criminal justice, and Ames Professor of Law Philip B. Heymann, who left for Washington to become deputy attorney general before he got a chance to teach it.

Moore is a member of the faculty committee on Mind, Brain and Behavior, which tries to integrate the different discipline of the University in how they approach topics of human behavior. Last year, Moore called on Stone from the Law School and School of Public Health instructors Felton J. Earls and Deborah B. Prothrow-Stith to tech the course.

All four instructors attend the weekly two-hour lectures, which are Mondays at 4. In each lecture, one instructor presents their view on some aspect of violence, and another comments on it. Students then engage all four teachers in a discussion.

But while this may be the course of the future, the future has more than a few wrinkles to iron out.

With four different points of view informed by three different disciplines, "Urban Violence" is not without its problems. Sometimes, the methodologies of the different disciplines come into conflict.

Richard J. McNulty, a third-year law student enrolled in the course, says the approach works in "Urban Violence." But it would work better, he says, if there weren't so many people in the class.

"I am very excited about the fact it's multidisciplinary," McNulty says. "But it might he hard to pull off in such a large setting."

Some students also complain that the approach of the School of Public Health instructors, who focus heavily on statistics, distracts the class from answering the question of why people commit violent acts.

And other students say the lectures and discussion don't attempt types about urban violence.

"You get people popping off their instincts, insights and prejudices about these issues," says third-year Law student Sarah C. Vonderlippe. "It's hard to know how to counter what's false and reinforce what's true."

Professors say they plan to use student feedback to improve the course next year.

"I think we're missing a sort of a legal and jurisprudential point of view," Moore says, citing law professor Stone's background in psychology.

"I hope this course will continue in the future," Moore adds, "and I can easily imagine other courses being mounted in this type."