History Department Divided Over Potential Loss of 'Study of the Past'

Members of the History Department remain divided over the absence of a “Study of the Past” requirement in the General Education Review Committee’s final report released in January.

History professor and member of the General Education review committee Maya R. Jasanoff ’96 said she thinks exposure to history is beneficial to all students. However, while working on the report she had to balance her desire to introduce as many students as possible to the discipline with her goals as a member of the Committee, Jasanoff said.

“As a practitioner within the field of history, I would love to see history be like the ‘thing’ that everybody takes as a freshman,” Jasanoff said. “But I don’t feel, as a member of the Committee, in thinking about what the faculty believes and what students believe, that the place to mandate this is in... a fairly narrowly conceived requirement called Study of the Past.”

Rather than focusing on the study of the past, Jasanoff said she would like to see an emphasis on gaining understanding of change over time and that the new Gen Ed program provides ample room for courses to do just that. For example, one of four new Gen Ed categories is called “Histories, Societies, Individuals.”

“In the earlier Gen Ed program, the word history doesn’t appear anywhere, and from my point of view as a historian, having the word ‘history’ just put into students’ consciousness is important,” Jasanoff said.

History professor Andrew D. Gordon ’74—who proposed the amendment to the current Gen Ed program that led to the addition of the Study of the Past requirement in 2007—said the “Histories, Societies, Individuals” classification alleviates some of his initial concerns about the loss of the requirement.

“People in the History Department were very concerned that [in] those eight categories that we currently have, none of them reference the past,” he said, referring to the current program.

He said that the classification “Histories, Societies, Individuals” will be sufficient if people interpret the commas in its title to mean “and” instead of “or.”

“I think probably that a lot of it comes down to how the committee will interpret it—not the people who wrote the report, but the committee going forward if this gets adopted,” Gordon said. The proposal awaits Faculty approval; they are expected to vote on the Gen Ed review committee's proposal soon.

Jasanoff said she is unsure how the classification will be interpreted.

History Department Chair David R. Armitage said many of his colleagues emphasized the need for Study of the Past in Faculty meetings before a history component was explicitly added, but an apparent tide of discontent has somewhat subsided with the inclusion of “Histories, Societies, Individuals.”

“[History] is an extremely important part of any form of intellectual understanding that will be communicated through the Gen Ed program,” he said.

At a Faculty meeting in December, General Education review committee chair Sean D. Kelly cautioned against creating too- narrow Gen Ed categories, arguing that they would not be effective.

Some members of the History Department remain unconvinced. History professor Michael Szonyi said that he is “deeply concerned” about the proposed discontinuation of the requirement.

“I realize that there are contending priorities, but it seems to me that part of a proper general education curriculum should be some encounter with thinking historically,” he said.

—Staff writer Mia C. Karr can be reached at mia.karr@thecrimson.com. Follow her on twitter@miackarr.