Convocation: Louis Menand

Harvard University professor of English and American literature and language, Louis Menand is widely considered to be the foremost modern scholar of American studies. He is the author of the Pulitzer Prize winning The Metaphysical Club, a detailed history of American intellectual and philosophical life in the 19th and 20th centuries. His recent book The Marketplace of Ideas, has sparked a debate about the future of American education. Has American higher education become a dinosaur? Why do professors all tend to think alike? What makes it so hard for colleges to decide which subjects should be required? Why do teachers and scholars find it so difficult to transcend the limits of their disciplines? Why, in short, are problems that should be easy for universities to solve so intractable? The answer, Menand argues, is that the institutional structure and the educational philosophy of higher education have remained the same for one hundred years, while faculties and student bodies have radically changed and technology has drastically transformed the way people produce and disseminate knowledge. Sponsored by the Fred W. and Margaret C. Schuster Distinguished Visiting Lecturer in Literature Fund, the title of his presentation was "Why the Case for Liberal Education is Hard to Make."