HARVARD REJECTS "REASON AND FAITH"

Chronicle of Higher Education
Thursday, December 14, 2006

Harvard Drops Religion Requirement From Proposed New Curriculum

By THOMAS BARTLETT

It looks as if Harvard University students won't have to take a religion course after all.

In October, a university committee called the Task Force on General Education released a proposal to overhaul Harvard's core curriculum. The most-talked-about change would require students to take a course in a category dubbed "Reason and Faith." At the time, Louis Menand, a co-chair of the committee, said the requirement would help students understand "rapid change and conflicts between reason and faith."

But in a letter about proposed curriculum changes that the committee sent to faculty members at Harvard this month, that category was dropped. The letter, which has not been made public, says the category is not needed because religion-related classes will be offered in other areas of the curriculum.

Views like those expressed in an essay by Steven Pinker, a Harvard professor who opposed the Reason and Faith requirement, may have played a role in derailing the requirement.

In his essay, published in The Harvard Crimson and adopted from comments he shared with the committee, Mr. Pinker, a professor of psychology, wrote that the requirement gave religion "far too much prominence."

In an e-mail message on Wednesday, Mr. Pinker called dropping Reason and Faith "an excellent change."

The committee has suggested that a new category, called "What It Means to Be a Human Being," replace Reason and Faith.

Neither Mr. Menand nor his co-chair, Alison Simmons, a professor of philosophy, could be reached for comment on Wednesday.

Final recommendations from the committee are expected to be released in January.