Harvard 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.” ...