Earlier this month, Stanford’s Faculty Senate voted nearly unanimously to extend COLLEGE, a new general education program required of every undergraduate. Professor Iván Marinovic voted no—and then explained why in The Stanford Daily. His case is straightforward: The program buries the Western canon under a curriculum built around identity, power, and oppression. Marinovic argues that Stanford has already drifted further from classical education than its peers and that COLLEGE entrenches that drift, rather than corrects it. This may seem a small issue—what freshmen at one school are taught. But we think it gets at something bigger. We’re republishing Professor Marinovic’s essay because it asks a vital question: What should a great American university teach? — The Editors
The Stanford Faculty Senate voted last week to extend Civic, Liberal, and Global Education (COLLEGE), a program of three general-education courses—Why College?, Citizenship in the 21st Century, and a Global Perspectives menu—that all undergraduates take in their first year. The vote was nearly unanimous. I voted no.
I did not take the vote lightly. Many colleagues have worked on this program for years, and I acknowledge these efforts. But I cannot support a program I believe will be detrimental to the education we offer our students.
My objection is not to general ed requirements. The humanities are indispensable to an undergraduate education, and a Stanford degree is incomplete without some exposure to the best of them.
