Now, rally for integration
Published: Monday, October 5, 2009
Updated: Monday, October 5, 2009
In a controversial opinion editorial in the April 26 edition of “The New York Times,” a Columbia University religion professor wrote, “End the University as We Know it.” The author said that graduate education is the Detroit of higher learning. It exclaimed the systematic abuse of graduate students and the corruption of tenured professors, but above all the lack of basic integration between departments, students and faculty.
Because I am a philosophy major, I look to our own philosophy department as both the symbol of lack of integration and a symbol of positive integration.
For example, the philosophy department has integrated a mathematics and computer science initiative based on argumentation and logic. In order to build and maintain this initiative, the department works with the math and computer science departments, as well as GlaxoSmithKline’s research department. Last year, the first graduate of the major, Melissa Schumacher, was accepted into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s ultra-competitive language program.
In parallel, the philosophy department has integrated a class on biological ethics from the biology department. Two professors of the philosophy department are active in the Slow Food Club, an agricultural club devoted to healthier and ethically produced food for campus.
The department is less connected in any number of respects. But this seems counterintuitive considering that philosophy exists both as a system of existence in and of itself and as the further masterful consideration of any field. For example, there are certainly academic moral arguments to be made about last years’ water shortage or the impending shutdown of the Natural Resources Library.
Perhaps you have read any number of Paul McCauley’s scathing attacks of the University’s bureaucracy, or my attack on the Atrium. Any well-intended critic of the school or its parts is really encouraging the betterment of material and mental gains.
The first problem is that of facts and changes that we make in our lives. Rally4Tally is a perfect example of this. We know the exact cost of what we voted for or against yesterday.
We know approximately how much work we do, how much work we need to do, and how much work we should but are not doing. We notice when our football team wins or loses. We notice when our friends are working hard enough that they show that they are happy or depressed. People who have a general comfort about their lives, the people who are happy, are able to work harder than those who are depressed.
To the extent that this student body battles factual problems that are solved by hands-on means, columnists tell students again and again to physically build this school. Every column is an invitation to enrich this school: shacking up at Shack-a-Thon, doing your homework to the best of your ability, talking to Greek Life, talking to diversity programs, volunteering through clubs and organizations, meeting with professors outside of class and generally calming down the very human chemicals that make these processes difficult and exciting the passions that make these challenges easy.
The second problem is that of consciousness. If we do not know that the school is great, we cannot tell anyone how great the school is. If we do not know that some departments are isolated, we cannot think to integrate them.
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