The President's Perspective

JHJ-49-59.final 12/5/03 2:58 PM Page 50 JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL of technology in the classroom, travel ex- serve the fine progress they’re making and The President’s periences in the curriculum, about how to raise questions. We’re going to do Perspective students can work in teams. something that’s going to be very much We’re thinking about the extracurricu- valued by students and alumni alike. On an October Friday afternoon, Lawrence H. lar aspects of Harvard experience as [Of course,] Derek Bok famously ob- Summers met with Harvard Magazine in his of- well—for example, whether students who served that reforming the curriculum was fice at Massachusetts Hall to discuss the status of do public service can consider issues of like moving a cemetery, so I don’t know the priorities he outlined in his installation address, evaluating the programs they’re involved how long the process will go. I would cer- on October 12, 2001: undergraduate education, in as part of their academic work. tainly hope there’ll be some quite well- public service, science, and campus crystallized notions by the end growth. He also reviewed other is- of this academic year. sues, from the external environ- ment and within the University, on On issues and opportunities in the which he has focused during the professional schools. first 27 months of his service as We’re thinking in funda- Harvard’s twenty-seventh presi- mental ways about education dent. Excerpts from the conversa- in almost every part of the Uni- tion follow. The Editors versity. The new deans of the divinity and education schools On the review of undergraduate are thinking about establishing education. core curricula for first-year stu- I think the curriculum re- dents in those programs. The view is o≠ to a great start new dean of the law school, with Bill Kirby’s leadership. Elena Kagan, is reviewing the People really came together nature of the basic first-year as they reflected on it in the sequence that students take, year before Bill became dean for the first time since Christo- of the Faculty of Arts and pher Columbus Langdell insti- Sciences [FAS] and came to tuted it in 1870. Dean Joseph the view that it was time for Martin is considering how the an overall review of our un- medical school’s case method dergraduate experience. [approach] needs to be modi- Certainly, we do very many fied after 15 years of experience things very well, but any with the New Pathway cur- human innovation should riculum. The business school be reviewed at least every instituted this year an ethics quarter century and there’s module in its course for the a great deal that’s changed first time. in the world since the Core There are a few common ele- curriculum was introduced. ments across our professional We are in a world that’s schools. One is the importance much more global, particu- of active learning and some larly in terms of interactions variant on the case method, and with developing countries. the new curricula all involve, in Science will be much more one way or another, thinking salient in the lives of our about actual practical prob- students along with technology. And with So I feel that this review is going in a lems—students working together and Bill’s leadership, we’ve got a really good very good way. We’ve got a long way to go talking together in preparation for their structure in place where we’re thinking and it’s never easy to generate consensus classes. The article on case-method teach- about all the important issues, from how on these things, but I think Bill Kirby and ing by business school professor David to maximize faculty-student contact to Dick Gross, who’s done a great job as the Garvin in the September-October maga- looking hard at the Core. We’re looking new dean of the College, and their col- zine had some of the excitement [see hard at questions of concentrations, par- leagues who are chairing the various com- “Making the Case,” page 56]. ticularly interdisciplinary concentrations. mittees are really doing a good job. I have a The second emerging preoccupation in There’s some terrific thinking underway chance to meet each month with the our professional schools will be leader- with respect to the way we teach, the role steering group for the review and to ob- ship. In some ways, it’s a cliché—but 50 January - February 2004 Photographs of President Summers by Justin Allardyce Knight JHJ-49-59.final 12/5/03 2:59 PM Page 51 propositions become clichés because they’re true—that Harvard’s mission is to HARVARD PORTRAIT train leaders. For each of our professional schools, there are institutions to which they’re oriented: corporations, law firms, government agencies, hospitals or health organizations, denominations or non- profit organizations, schools or school dis- tricts—and sound management and good finance, the ability to establish a vision and the techniques for carrying that vision through [are fundamental to each]. So questions relating to collaboration and thinking about leadership are going to be increasingly important in the years ahead. The third important trend is an interest on our students’ part in crossing more than one profession or one institution over the course of their careers. You see it in the establishment of a joint-degree pro- gram between the law school and the public-health school. You see it in the pro- gram that the business school and the education school have jointly run for school superintendents. You see it, very generally, in the big increase in interest at the law school in various kinds of public service that Dean Kagan has emphasized and in the nearly half of our medical students who spend time abroad within the four years of their medical school to work on what have traditionally been thought of as problems in public health. So the question of collaboration across our schools is Kenneth S. Rogoff going to be a common theme as they As the american under-21 chess champion, Kenneth S. Rogo≠ decided to “miss renew their curricular experiences. most of the last two years of high school.” He left Rochester, New York, to support At the same time, there are enduring himself in Yugoslavia on prize winnings—perhaps an inkling of his international in- challenges common to the professional terests. Yale accepted his equivalency diploma; in college he played chess summers schools. How does one maintain the right only (placing no lower than seventh in three U.S. Championships), indulging instead balance in a professional school between a a new passion, economics, in which he was taught by future Nobel laureate James faculty that is connected to the world of Tobin. Thereafter, Rogo≠ dropped out of MIT to play chess until he quit (cold practice and a faculty that is at the highest turkey) to earn a Ph.D. in 1980. Professor of economics at Harvard since 1999, he has standards of intellectual rigor, given that pursued “problems at the intersection of political economy and economics,” a phe- practitioners are often looking for easier nomenon he saw firsthand during two years on leave as chief economist and research expositions and are oriented not to the director of the International Monetary Fund, ending last fall. He has documented frontier but to the useful. That’s a matter the “political budget cycle”: governments’ willingness to raise taxes, for example, rel- on which our professional-school deans ative to the electoral calendar, and “why voters fall for it.” His interpretation of inter- are exchanging ideas and information all national debt (more symptom than cause of developing countries’ weak growth) ex- the time. A lot that’s good comes in that tends to speculation on “why countries like the U.S. can borrow enough to wrap a cross-fertilization. rope around their necks several times” while others cannot secure credit. As the new One other area that is also worth think- director of Harvard’s Center for International Development, he will focus research ing about is the use of the University’s on “the big problem for the world over the next 100 years”: that two billion people convening power. One of the wonderful are poor although “our world is a cornucopia.” On the home front, filmmaker things about Harvard is its ability to draw Natasha Rogo≠ pioneered the Russian Sesame Street, but International Grandmaster leading people from every walk of life to Kenneth will teach children Gabriel, seven, and Juliana, five, the basic chess moves. come here and participate in discussions, Photograph by Jim Harrison Harvard Magazine 51 JHJ-49-59.final 12/5/03 3:00 PM Page 52 JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL Allston Planning: Working “Hypotheses” In a 5,900-word letter to the Harvard community dated Octo- •Housing and urban life: New housing units will accommodate ber 21, written at the Corporation’s request, President Lawrence graduate and professional students, and perhaps some faculty H. Summers outlined the “especially fortunate” prospect for cam- members; amenities (shopping, parks, transportation) must be pus growth in Allston and propounded “a set of working hypothe- provided to sustain a lively urban neighborhood. ses” that might guide academic development there.While noting •Culture and community: Performing-arts space and museums that much of the 200 acres of land is “highly encumbered,” he will both enliven Allston and meet currently unfulfilled needs. forecast “limited building within the next several years” and more •Undergraduate life.

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