What’s in a Concentration?

The Faculty Council’s unanimous approval of a concentration in human developmental and regenerative biology (HDRB) is an exciting development, especially at a time when stem cell research promises to revolutionize medicine and dramatically improve the quality of human life. The prospect of this new concentration, however, also raises important questions about the College’s guiding pedagogical principles that the Faculty would be remiss to ignore. As the Faculty decides whether to approve HDRB as a field of concentration—as, to be sure, we hope it will do—it should remain mindful of the purpose of a concentration within the larger context of a liberal arts education.

HDRB is without question a crucial area of study, and we welcome the commitment of Harvard’s scientific community to provide undergraduates with an opportunity to work in this field—just as we welcome any initiative that expands educational opportunities available to Harvard students. That said, the adoption of HDRB as an independent field of concentration must be done for the right reasons. At a liberal arts institution, importance alone is not sufficient to meet this threshold. There are several distinct fields of study which do not and should not qualify as independent concentrations, despite their importance.

Instead, proposed concentrations should be evaluated according to that field’s independence and breadth. To meet this threshold, a field of study should not be subordinate to any other field of study and should command a broad range and history of inquiry. Truly distinct fields of study satisfy both of these criteria, and only truly distinct fields of study should be adopted as concentrations. Most undergraduates have specialized interests within their fields of study—some physics concentrators might otherwise elect to “concentrate” in nuclear energy, for example, and some English concentrators might otherwise elect to “concentrate” in twentieth-century Irish literature. And while these specialties are ideal fare for course selections and theses, the charge of a well-rounded liberal arts education demands that Harvard undergraduates be exposed, as comprehensively as possible, to a broad and distinct field of study. This is what a concentration should be about. There is ample time, after all, for specialized research in a student’s graduate years.

To be clear, there is no doubt that concentrations should be allowed to evolve just as modes of inquiry and fields of study evolve. If a particular field of study grows untenably broad, it should be divided among its essential components. But this process should be one of evolution, not transformation; it should, in other words, involve only the relocation of boundaries between concentrations, not a fundamental revision of what concentrations are meant to be.

Given the centrality and breadth that characterize HDRB, we do not doubt that it should qualify for concentration status. As human knowledge continues to expand and splinter, however, it will become increasingly important for the Faculty to hold fast to its liberal arts principles. Undergraduates at Harvard should specialize in a distinct and central field of study in the tradition of the liberal arts; they are not graduate students, postdocs, or researchers, and their experience should not be treated as such. Even as the face of science transforms, the core pedagogical values that have guided the College for well over a century must remain constant.