What? Liberal Arts Here?

"It doesn't really matter, it's not like you're asking me whether you should run out into the middle of the highway, it's just a decision about your concentration," exclaimed an assistant professor in the economics department as I sat in his office sometime last year wondering aloud whether I truly belonged in economics. I had suggested that maybe I should give up economics after a couple of mediocre academic experiences and switch to social anthropology, a field which sounded interesting at the time but about which I knew absolutely nothing.

I know that when I chose to concentrate in economics freshman year it was certainly not due to a love for the field inspired by a semester and a half of Ec 10. Rather, economics seemed like the easiest and least offensive of all my choices. Most of my classmates received absolutely no advising before declaring their concentration, contrary to the misconception that first-years receive more advice than they need or know what to do with. Basic decisions of class choice or thesis advising, as well as decisions about the recruiting process and graduate school applications, require some amount of advising.

While the department has made graduate student tutors available during the tutorial office's working hours, this system seems inefficient because it provides a surplus of available advice without providing advisers with whom students can develop a relationship. Within both the Yard and the House systems students are not provided with a residential concentration adviser who they can get to know well and who they are sure will provide continuity between one year and the next.

I realize that the large size of a department like economics has advantages, such as the great number of class offering and immense teaching staff, which will be further increased within the next few years. However, increasing and diversifying the number of new professors cannot entirely solve some of the most basic problems. Deciphering the economics department's complex requirements would seem to require more than the bi-annual five-minute conversation with the fifth-year graduate student who serves as my house concentration adviser and signs my study cards.

It was after my conversation last year with the assistant professor that I made the bold decision to actually take an anthropology class, despite having already filled all of my economics related field requirements. I enrolled myself in a gender-studies class because it was the only class in the social anthropology department which fit my schedule. There were 46 undergraduate women in the class as well as several female graduate students. There were two men in the class.

In the economics department, women have likewise made up a minority in every one of my classes. They comprise just 28 percent of economics concentrators, compared with 44 percent of the College. The anthropology class was cross listed with the women's studies department, which includes 15 tenured female professors and no male professors. The economics department, in contrast, includes 31 tenured male professors and one tenured female professor. The Women in Economics and Government Society exists to provide a support group for female concentrators in these two departments. However, the group often serves more as a pre-professional group and is less helpful for first-years making concentration decisions.

The gender imbalance was only one of Harvard's many polar disparities between gender studies and the study of economics. Besides surface differences, economics and gender studies have surprisingly little student enrollment overlap, and in my experience students in each department have little or no experience in the other field. For example, few of my peers in the gender studies class had ever read an economic critique of Marx, although Marx's writings were discussed in the class. On the other hand, few economics concentrators have any desire to gain an appreciation of cultural discourse on gender.

If there were only more contact between departments, there could also be significant fusion of ideas. Anthropology gives a meaningful critique of neo-classical economics and its limitations, while economic approaches can be used to model such gendered topics as marriage, divorce and fertility.

In fact, some women who I have met (in the economics and government departments in particular) are adamantly opposed to identifying themselves too strongly with the Women's Studies Department because they do not expect to be taken seriously in business or policy work if they are grouped together with other women. One economics concentrator recently told me that she does not like to think of herself as a woman; she prefers to see herself as a future business executive and does not understand the need to "bond" with other women.

The women's studies department has similar peculiarities which only show how important it is to bridge the interdisciplinary gap. For example: "Guiding Light," the soap opera, was one of the common popular culture examples used to illustrate theoretical arguments in my gender-studies class. Not ever having watched the soap opera, I was a bit lost during these classes, and I wondered if it would be incorrect to critique this "soap opera discourse" as culturally and gender specific, and as a poor model to illustrate points in class.

However, my warm experience within a small department prompted me to realize the drawbacks of concentrating in a large department such as economics. I am not trying to suggest that academia should be warm and fuzzy. (Our anthropology graduate student section leader used such terms as "community cyberspace discourse" and encouraged "face-to-face encounters", even offering to meet with us during the beginning of this semester in order to stay in touch.) I think most people would agree that students learn best when they are challenged. I only mean to point out the huge imbalance between two departments which both lie within the social sciences and would have much to contribute to each other.

This imbalance and lack of contact between departments can be found in many other disciplines at Harvard, and is not limited to the social sciences. While the College's professors may be in contact with each other through professional channels such as the Harvard Institute for International Development or professional colloquia, the undergraduates in their departments often have little or no academic contact with their peers. One often feels there is just no time to take more than the required number of classes in related concentrations, let alone challenging classes in unrelated fields.

As this is published the memory of shopping period is still fresh in every student and teacher's mind, as are the accompanying stressful class choices. For many students in the College, the idea of liberal arts education rarely conforms to the reality of academic decision making. Pre-medical and pre-business students are tracked from the first semester of their first year to take the "right" classes or risk losing out when they compete against their peers for the most selective positions. Students must take the initiative in pushing for more responsive administrations, as well as in independently exploring diverse academic disciplines in order to fully take advantage of all that Harvard has to offer.

Leila C. Kawar '98 is a junior living in Winthrop House.