Crisis on Campus_ A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities - Mark C. Taylor [2]
Many of these long and thoughtful e-mails gave me a valuable window into public perceptions that reinforced my sense of the widening chasm between the ivory tower and the world at large. While countless messages were moving, one in particular stands out. It was from a young woman named Rita Sophie Bragiuli, who was a senior at Northwestern University. She was interested in pursuing graduate work in the study of religion but was encountering problems that unfortunately are all too common.
I think your points for revision are obviously radical, but that many of them make a great deal of sense. I also think it is time for the academic community to realize that it must restructure itself. I certainly fear, though almost expect, that no one will actually read my work, and that it will go for naught, even if there is real world application to it. It seems to me as if universities as well as scholars are producing too much literature, yet saying too little, with very little synthesis of ideas.
The course of study which I have proposed is inherently interdisciplinary, and I can’t begin to describe how difficult it has been for me to explain this. I plan to study religion through the lens of psychology, both experimental and theoretical. I’d like to understand the impact religious specifics (texts, philosophies, rituals, etc.) through history have on the mind of the religious individual today, and how that implicates this person’s behavior (from belief to going to temple/church to conversion to acts of violence). Though this study is extremely broad, and incorporates fields of religion, history, anthropology, ethnography, philosophy, and psychology, the tools to complete this study are out there, and can have real impact on how we understand the modern religious mind. In addition, I want to eventually make this study comparative. Both Harvard and [the University of] Chicago have told me that this plan is interesting, but that I will have to pave the interdisciplinary path if I intend to take from both major fields (religion and modern psychology) equally. Indeed, I still cannot find any advisor who studies something quite like this. Despite the fact that universities may not be ready to follow this route, from talking to many future graduate students and scholars I’ve realized that the younger generation is craving such connections as well as applicability….
Finally, I completely agree with you about collaborative work and classes across universities. Just an anecdote from my own experience: though Northwestern and University of Chicago are both members of a collaborative group of midwestern universities, I could not find a way to take Sanskrit at the University of Chicago. I wasn’t allowed to enroll in a graduate course exchange program because I did not already have a B.A., and I could not enroll as an undergraduate without applying to the college. As a result, I’ve been traveling to the University of Chicago twice a week to learn Sanskrit while receiving no credit and no official transcript. I am grateful to the professors there for realizing my predicament and letting me attend class anyway. However, it is this kind of barrier that would discourage the enthusiastic student who is simply interested in learning….
The level of sophistication of this young woman and her projected plan of study are quite impressive. What she is proposing is the kind of work we should be encouraging rather than discouraging.
A few weeks later, a conversation