LiberalArtsOnline Volume 1, Number 13
December 2001
by Tim Padgett
Miami & Caribbean Bureau Chief
Time Magazine
This past summer, before we started wearing latex gloves to open our mail, Paul Pribbenow used this forum to prod his humanities colleagues to be more engaged by science. In retrospect, Paul's was a particularly prescient essay: the anthrax scare should remind us that if an embattled liberal arts community wants to retain its status as a nurturer of citizen leaders, it is going to need to mine its interdisciplinary potential more seriously than ever.
I say this chiefly because the one glaring shortcoming of our present citizen leaders in this crisis, from CDC officials to postal authorities to cabinet secretaries, is interdisciplinary training and sense. Here in Florida, where the anthrax fright began, I have watched public health professionals, people who can measure the size of a Bacillus anthracis spore, use ten thumbs when it comes to coordinating and communicating epidemiological information. Likewise, I have scribbled one day, and then scratched out the next, quotes from political leaders who are usually artful at quelling public fears--except, as we now know, when they have to assimilate details of science. Example: yes, the anthrax had been "weaponized;" and to deny that fact one day and then sheepishly have to acknowledge it the next only needlessly exacerbates the panic. Even before Sept. 11, we weren't looking much more sure of ourselves when it came to 21st-century issues like stem cell policy; or even earlier, in the 1980s, during the AIDS tragedy.
I have always looked at liberal arts colleges as an antidote for that kind of panic. That's not because I think their curricula are necessarily stronger than those at research universities; rather, it's because their curricular circuit boards are so much better integrated--and more consciously wired for teaching students how to use that integrated learning for a greater good.
There has never been a more important time than now, in my opinion, for liberal arts schools to advertise that core strength--and broaden it. By that I mean reaching beyond the emphasis on breadth of learning to a more deliberate synthesis of learning. To the purists of the academy: no, I am not endorsing a trendy mongrelization of the arts and sciences. But I have heard liberal arts educators in recent years talk increasingly about offering the kind of team-taught courses that can deepen and enliven interdisciplinary learning.
Consider the forums, for example, that you now often hear covered on NPR: biologists, philosophers and politicians sitting down to determine which individuals get which attention first when the terrorists really do figure out how to unleash biochemical weapons on a population larger than a network newsroom. To me, the logical step in the liberal arts arena is elective courses that force the student to absorb the scientific, the ethical and the political simultaneously--not just separately at 10:20 am, noon and 2:10 pm. As Daniel Defoe reminds us so succinctly but affectively in _A Journal of the Plague Year_ (as succinctly and affectively as one wishes today's leaders could communicate) doctors and politicians alike need to remember how easy it still is for the public to be "really overcome with delusions" in the face of an epidemic.
This is not about breaking down the proper walls between the academic fields of the liberal arts; it's about strengthening their vital ties. That is one of the most important things that sets the liberal arts apart--a distinction the world outside the academy can appreciate more than ever today.
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LiberalArtsOnline is an occasional email essay on the liberal arts, provided as a public service of the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts.
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The comments published in LiberalArtsOnline reflect the opinions of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the Center of Inquiry or Wabash College. Comments may be quoted or republished in full, with attribution to the author, LiberalArtsOnline, and the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts.