Interfaculty Initiatives Help Undergraduates Think Outside the Box

December 09, 1999

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HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

By Ken Gewertz
Gazette Staff

John Couriel '00 is doing his senior thesis on corruption in Latin America. He says his work has been aided by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, one of 10 Interfaculty Initiatives at Harvard. Photo by Justin Ide.

Like any student of human behavior, John Couriel ’00 is interested in what people bring to the table. But it’s what goes on under the table that is the real focus of his attention.

Couriel is writing a senior thesis on bribery in Latin America. Specifically, he is trying to answer the question of whether the presence of American multi-national corporations in Buenos Aires will help curb the widespread corruption that is a prevalent feature of Argentinean business culture.

"My hypothesis is that where American money goes, American law will follow. And since American money is going to more places, more places will have American-style laws," Couriel said.

This is no library dissertation. Couriel did not glean his principal facts from newspaper articles or from collections of data preserved on microfiche. Instead he went directly to the source, spending the summer in Buenos Aires as the guest of a prominent attorney, the chairman of an organization called Transparency International, which seeks to investigate and curb business corruption.

Couriel interviewed business executives and distributed copies of a survey he designed himself. He is now waiting to see if the results of his survey will confirm his expectations.

The Interfaculty Initiatives
Couriel’s research, as well as that of many other enterprising undergraduate scholars, would not have been possible without an interdisciplinary organization that has had a major impact on research and teaching at Harvard over the last five years. The David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS), founded in 1994, works to increase knowledge of the cultures, histories, environment, and contemporary affairs of the countries of Latin America.

The Center is one of a group of 10 programs known as the Interfaculty Initiatives. They were identified in a University-wide planning effort as areas that are important to society and which could only be adaquately addressed through collaboration across faculties.

The Initiatives are: the Environment; Health Policy; the Harvard Children’s Initiative; Mind/Brain/Behavior; the University Center for Ethics and the Professions; the Asia Center; the David Rockefeller Center; the Native American Program; the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations; and the Center for International Development.

Ilana Kurshan '00, examining a phrenological model, is doing her senior thesis on phrenology and mesmerism, combining literary studies with the history of science. She credits the Mind/Brain/Behavior Interfaculty Initiative with helping her make connections across faculty lines. Photo by Rose Lincoln.

These programs have made a powerful impact in a number of different areas. Faculty and associates benefit from the opportunity to pursue lines of inquiry and share results with others who may be approaching similar subjects from different points of view.

Graduate students derive a like advantage through exposure to those who can broaden their outlook and make them aware of scholarly resources that might ordinarily have escaped their attention.

Individuals and groups in the world beyond the University may profit directly or indirectly from research projects or by participating in executive or professional education programs.

Finally, undergraduates like John Couriel are able to enrich their undergraduate experience through interdisciplinary coursework as well as through opportunities for original research that might be difficult to find in a traditional context.

Of course, there are other avenues for interdisciplinary research at Harvard outside the Interfaculty Initiatives. Dual concentrations and multi-perspective seminars have long been an option for undergraduates. What the Interfaculty Initiatives offer is the chance to participate in an area of study in which new and innovative perspectives are being applied to pressing social issues.

"The David Rockefeller Center has been a great resource," said Couriel, who is conducting his research project under the direction of Samuel Huntington, the Albert J. Weatherhead University Professor. "The staff people there are very dedicated, very savvy. They will facilitate the acquisition of contacts so that you hit the ground running."

This past spring, when he was beginning to design his research project, the Center arranged for him to attend a board meeting of Transparency International in Washington, D.C., and later facilitated his introduction to the group’s chairman, Luis Moreno Ocampo.

Through the Center, he was also introduced to Philip Heymann, the James Barr Ames Professor of Law, who helped him think about corruption from a systematic perspective and to define some of the goals of his research.

"The Center is a clearinghouse for academic opportunities in Latin America. It has been a very important part of my Harvard experience," he said.

A Time to Experiment
In some ways, undergraduates may be ideally suited to benefit from the academic opportunities that the Interfaculty Initiatives offer. That is the opinion expressed by Anne Harrington, professor of the history of science and co-director of the Initiative in Mind/Brain/Behavior (MBB).

"The undergraduate period is an ideal time in the educational process to introduce students to the challenging possibilities of

interdisciplinary work," Harrington said.

"Students have generally not yet made a full commitment to a specific profession or disciplinary focus, have not yet been socialized by the post-graduate training process to trim down or reshape their questions into forms acceptable to specific disciplines. In this sense, it is an expansive time, a time when it is still safe to take risks, to experiment with intellectual possibilities."

One student who has taken full advantage of this opportunity to experiment is Ilana Kurshan ’00, whose senior thesis on phrenology and mesmerism combines literary studies with the history of science. Kurshan is looking at how early-19th-century popularizers of these pseudo-sciences used literary conventions borrowed from such figures as Wordsworth and Shakespeare to persuade their readers to accept the validity of their claims.

Kurshan said she has been fascinated by what these writings reveal about the public’s understanding of science at that time in history and the esteem in which it was held relative to that accorded to literary figures.

"I was amazed to find that the term ‘scientist’ wasn’t coined until 1834," she said. "Science wasn’t really strictly defined in Victorian times. Science and literature are thought of as antithetical today, but then one could still be used to support the other."

A history of science concentrator in the Mind/Brain/Behavior track, Kurshan came to her present project partly through taking Harrington’s courses, Madness and Medicine: Themes in the History of Psychiatry and Evolution and the Mind. She credits the MBB with helping her make connections across faculty lines, specifically in Countway Medical Library, where she carried out a large portion of her research.

Her association with MBB, Kurshan said, has "enabled me to think more broadly and to make connections between subjects that are arbitrarily separated along disciplinary lines. The fact that I’m not focused in one discipline scares me sometimes, but it also means that every semester I get to take courses that I love. MBB has helped me identify the questions that interest me the most, the ones that most thrill me."

The Need for Self-Discipline
If there is one drawback to the freedom of inquiry that the Interfaculty Initiatives allow, it is that not every undergraduate is capable of the self-discipline necessary to pursue a course of study that straddles traditional disciplines. Dennis Thompson, the Alfred North Whitehead Professor of Political Philosophy and director of the University Center for Ethics and the Professions, feels that this danger must be stressed, if only to balance the many benefits that the Initiatives offer.

"An interdisciplinary concentration is not for everyone," he said. "For one thing, it is quite possible to do genuinely interdisciplinary work while majoring in one discipline, and many students do. For another, the advantages of mastering a discipline are important and can be lost if the interdisciplinary major is not carefully constructed and rigorously pursued. But for those few students who have the intellectual independence, strong motivation, and interest in a subject that truly does not fit comfortably within a discipline, the experience can be unusually rewarding and productive."

One student who fills these requirements is Matthew Price ’97. Now a graduate student in the Government Department, Price did his senior thesis on the subject of paternalism, arguing that under certain circumstances it was justifiable for society to tell people what to do for their own good.

"I looked at a legal cases involving unconscionable contracts, for example, in which there was a large disparity of bargaining power between the parties, and I said that it may be right in these cases for the government to step in." Price made similar arguments for euthanasia, the use of illegal drugs, and other cases.

Although his approach was largely theoretical, he did have some practical experience in the area. Much of this experience had come about as a result of his association with the Center for Ethics and the Professions.

The Center helped him make contact with Thomas Piper, the Lawrence E. Fouraker Professor of Business Administration, with whom Price worked on a case study dealing with the financial and ethical obligations of a failing steel plant that was the major employer in a small Canadian town. This and other experiences that the Center made available helped prepare Price to tackle the difficult questions raised in his thesis.

"The fact that there was a group of people from different disciplines, all of whom were concerned with ethical questions, made it easy to find the right person to talk to," he said. "If the structure hadn’t been there, it would have been much more daunting for an undergraduate to tackle a project like this."