From Doggishness to Discomfort

Today at noon, hundreds of students will pour into the lecture hall at Two Divinity Avenue for Foreign Cultures 56, "Jewish Life on Eastern Europe." Wolfson Professor of Jewish Studies Jay M. Harris estimates over half of the students taking the course are Jewish, prompting the course's nickname, "Jews for Jews."

Also at noon, Science Center B will overflow with students for History of Science Professor Everett I. Mendelsohn's course, Historical Studies A-18, "Science and Society in the Twentieth Century." Among Historical Studies A Core courses, the course has a reputation for attracting a sizable percentage of science concentrators; Mendelsohn calculates they make up 50 to 60 percent of the enrollment. Many have flocked to the course out of fear, reasoning that if the College requires them to take a history course, they might as well learn the history of something they already know--science--instead of studying international conflict, feminist history or politics in India.

These are but two examples of an instinct that leads students to take courses and read books in familiar subject areas instead of exploring unfamiliar departments and disciplines. I plead guilty to this instinct: A native Californian, I enrolled last spring in Literature 120, "Cityscapes: Los Angeles" when I could have instead studied algorithms or ancient history.

To be sure, for those scientists in Mendelsohn's course and Jews in Harris' course, there is much to be learned from a historical approach to science and one's ancestral history, respectively. In choosing these courses over others, however, students have frittered away a valuable opportunity to explore unfamiliar intellectual realms.

The blame for this situation rests squarely on the shoulders of students. In so many ways most of us are guilty of putting comfort above challenge and narrowness above breadth in our academic lives. We scan the course catalog looking for familiar reading lists and flock to courses that cover the history of our own race or culture.

When encountering reading which seem difficult to grasp, we give up and quickly place blame on the author for convoluted reasoning or poor writing, instead of redoubling our efforts to understand the argument or develop a more sophisticated critique. Rather than engage controversial authors, we are only too eager to brand them as racist, ignorant, sexist or enmeshed in the dominant culture--and we suffer because we ignore their insights.

For the student body at large, courses in Afro-American studies, ethnic studies and women's studies may provide useful exposure to the literature, culture and history of particular groups. But when members of the groups represented by these courses take only these courses, their goal for their own education becomes no more ambitious than self-affirmation and confirmation of one's origins.

In a 1988 speech at Harvard, the University of Chicago's Allan Bloom put his finger on this modern instinct of university students by way of analogy. Today's students, Bloom argued, are akin to the dogs of Plato's Republic, who are warm with friends and fierce toward enemies for no other reason than familiarity with the former and ignorance of the latter.

Dogs love the familiar regardless of its truth or worth and hate the foreign without bothering to understand it. It seems that many of us undergraduates have been consumed by our doggish pursuit of the familiar and blissful ignorance or the foreign.

When we limit our academic explorations by dwelling on our origins or our fields of familiarity, we deprive ourselves of the intellectual gains that come out of uncomfortable academic situations. While a degree of specialization allows one to deepen an understanding of a particular field, only the vigilant pursuit of academic breadth stirs one to question and sharpen his world view. It is only this breadth of study in the liberal arts that allows us to join the company of educated men and women, and we should feel guilty for seeking anything less.

Make no mistake, that regret is virtually guaranteed. A semester of watching "Chinatown" and deconstructing L.A. billboards in "Cityscapes" left me intellectually famished, and at the time I didn't know exactly what I had deprived myself of. Now, a few months away from a graduation, I look back on that course and others with regret and vainly hope for more time to discover game theory or Thucydides.

I therefore issue this challenge to those who still have time to heed it: transcend your doggishness. Your education should put you on the edge of your seat instead of allowing you to slouch firmly at the rear of it.

Don't dwell on the culture or field with which you're already acquainted, but instead seek out that which is most unfamiliar. Don't become enamored of your own world view but instead humble yourself in the face of the vast scholarship to which you will soon lose access. In your academic work, be quick to contemplate, slow to conclude and eager to traverse unfamiliar territory.

If you choose, like many do, to reason with yourself that it is best to strike a balance each semester between the familiar and the unfamiliar, be prepared for the regret you will feel in a few years after taking intellectual shortcuts on your way to your Harvard degree. Instead, take the long view over the short view, grit your teeth and be vigilant in seeking out discomfort. Adam R. Kovacevich '99 is a government concentrator in Quincy House. His column appears on alternate Mondays.