Core Curriculum
Faculty of the Committee on the Core Program
Jeremy R. Knowles, Amory Houghton Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (Chair)
Peter J. Burgard, Professor of German
Benedict H. Gross, George Vasmer Leverett Professor of Mathematics
Robert P. Kirshner, Professor of Astronomy
Eric S. Maskin, Louis Berkman Professor of Economics (on leave 1999-00)
Michael J. Sandel, Harvard College Professor and Professor of Government
Roman Szporluk, Mykhailo Hrushevs’kyi Professor of Ukrainian History and Director of the Ukrainian Research Institute
R. J. Tarrant, Harvard College Professor and Pope Professor of the Latin Language and Literature
William Mills Todd III, Curt Hugo Reisinger Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and Professor of Comparative Literature, and Dean for Undergraduate Education (ex officio)
The Core Curriculum Program
The philosophy of the Core Curriculum rests on the conviction that every Harvard graduate should be broadly educated, as well as trained in a particular academic specialty or concentration. It assumes that students need some guidance in achieving this goal, and that the faculty has an obligation to direct them toward the knowledge, intellectual skills, and habits of thought that are the hallmarks of educated men and women.
But the Core differs from other programs of general education. It does not define intellectual breadth as the mastery of a set of Great Books, or the digestion of a specific quantum of information, or the surveying of current knowledge in certain fields. Rather, the Core seeks to introduce students to the major approaches to knowledge in areas that the faculty considers indispensable to undergraduate education. It aims to show what kinds of knowledge and what forms of inquiry exist in these areas, how different means of analysis are acquired, how they are used, and what their value is. The courses within each area or subdivision of the program are equivalent in the sense that, while their subject matter may vary, their emphasis on a particular way of thinking is the same.