I’m a Big Kid Now

Google “Social Studies,” and the homepage for the rigorous, interdisciplinary, application-only “Harvard of Harvard concentrations” will come up second. The top hit? SocialStudiesforkids.com, a site devoted to helping kids grades K-5 answer such pressing questions as “What is a place?” and “How can I make a mental map?” This is what the name “Social Studies” means outside of Harvard, and it is exactly why the degree program must change its name.

True, Harvard doesn’t normally sacrifice precision for mellifluousness when it comes to titles. The College offers a concentration in “Government” rather than “Political Science” because the department did not originally do scientific work. One can concentrate in “Organismic and Evolutionary Biology” or “Molecular and Cellular Biology,” but not simply “Biology” because that name does not encourage “learning in breadth and learning in depth.” Heck, even the term “concentration”—as opposed to the clearer, more commonly used word “major”—is a Harvard-ism.

But it’s not for themselves that the Social Studies faculty should be concerned when it comes to the concentration’s title. It’s for their students.

Year after year, Social Studies concentrators are forced to bear the stigma of the grade-school name that their plan of study carries. Within Harvard, the childishness of this name matters very little, because those in the know understand that Social Studies concentrators definitely earn their keep. In addition to braving the grueling sophomore tutorial, the honors-only concentrators are trained by top-notch professors in the fields of human rights, global health policy, and political theory. Beyond the Harvard bubble, though, the first reaction Social Studies concentrators get when they tell others what they’re studying is either a snicker or a confused stare. Rather than receiving accolades for breaking their heads on Smith, Mill, Marx, Durkheim, and Hegel, they get: “But you’re in college now, aren’t you?”

Sure, students can explain that they are indeed in college and that, yes, they are in fact studying material above the fifth grade level. But such rationales will unfortunately never appear on a transcript or an actual degree. It’s hard to imagine a spectator looking at the diploma on your wall giving an impressed whistle and patting you on the back for mastering the art of map coloring.

Such anguish could be avoided with an effortless name change to either “Social and Political Theory” or “Social Thought.” Indeed, although “Social Studies” may seem to be the best title for a concentration that employs “an integrated approach to the study of social phenomena,” plenty of similar programs exist with names that don’t remind outsiders of diorama projects. First instituted at Oxford in the 1920s, the degree program “Philosophy, Politics, and Economics” (PPE) offers an almost identical academic experience as Social Studies does without the juvenile title. PPE is now offered, in some form or another, at Yale, Duke, Notre Dame, and the University of Pennsylvania. The description of Yale’s program in “Ethics, Politics, and Economics,” for instance, is nearly identical to Social Studies’: it joins the “analytic rigor of the social sciences” with the “enduring normative questions of philosophy” to explore the “institutions, practices, and policies” of the modern era.

True, the name “Social Studies” carries the weight of nearly five decades of blood, sweat, and tears, while a name like “PPE” does not. But the nostalgia should be left to the professors. The students are the ones who will need to tell their grandchildren what they studied as an undergraduate. A sign by the Radcliffe Quadrangle currently advertises the main offices for “Social Studies” right next to the “Quad Library.” Now that the latter’s appearance on that sign is an anachronism, hopefully the former can follow suit.

Avishai D. Don '12, a Crimson editorial comper, lives in Pforzheimer house.