A Ph.D. for VES

This Tuesday, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences will vote on creating a Ph.D. program in film and visual studies. We hope that the Faculty will recognize the strengths that a graduate program can bring to the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies (VES) and vote to approve the proposal.

Though small in scale—if approved, the department plans to admit just three students in the fall of 2009—the proposed graduate program will benefit both undergraduates and faculty enormously. Despite frequent complaints about teaching fellows dominating undergraduate pedagogy, the presence of graduate students actually enriches the undergraduate experience. Beyond providing undergraduates with more advanced course offerings and a pool of advisers and mentors, graduate programs create a culture of cutting edge research that in turn begets a more vibrant learning environment.

Indeed, the model of a research university is based on the idea that students will learn more when they learn from those who are pushing the boundaries of a field. When the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) was created in 1872, University President Charles W. Eliot argued to skeptics worried that graduate studies would dilute undergraduate education that the GSAS would actually strengthen the College. Only “if [professors] have to teach graduate students as well as undergraduates,” he argued, would they “regard their subjects as infinite, and keep up that constant investigation which is necessary for first-class teaching.”

Similarly, faculty will benefit from the heightened challenge and stimulation that teaching advanced students presents. The possibility of teaching upper-level, specialized courses and working alongside committed, sophisticated students is likely to draw ambitious, dedicated faculty members to Harvard. In the long run, a film Ph.D. program will strengthen VES at large.

Furthermore, given Harvard’s historically reluctance to support disciplines outside the standard academic canon, the creation of a film studies Ph.D. is an opportunity to underscore the significance of artistic study. The proposal is particularly fitting in the context of University President Drew G. Faust’s much-publicized initiative to promote the arts on campus. And the Ph.D. program will require almost no new funds: Given the program’s small size and the availability of resources, neither a dramatically expanded budget nor new hiring will be necessary to get the program off the ground.

Given the immense benefits and miniscule costs, we see no good reason to reject the creation of the Ph.D. program—save, perhaps, academic snobbery. The Faculty should embrace this opportunity to support the burgeoning field of film studies and approve the Ph.D. program.