Crisis on Campus_ A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities - Mark C. Taylor [50]
The challenge of effective reform is to find ways to create a balance between in-depth study in a particular area and research on emerging problems and questions that do not readily lend themselves to a single disciplinary approach. Obviously, specialized research will always be necessary and has led to many transformative breakthroughs. Advances in medicine and the natural sciences during the past half century would have been impossible without highly specialized knowledge and sophisticated technical expertise. In recent years, however, the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of specialization, and it is now time to open avenues of investigation that cut across disciplinary lines. In many cases, the narrowing of focus is needlessly restrictive and tends to limit creativity. It often takes an outsider to see what insiders overlook. In all areas of endeavor, creativity comes about by bringing together what usually is held apart. Just as artistic innovation often occurs by mixing different genres, so intellectual innovation frequently results from crossing different disciplines. Educational reform should have as one of its primary goals the creation of conditions that make innovation more likely.
To get a sense of the problems involved with making the changes necessary to accomplish this end, consider my own field—religion. Recall the complaints of Rita, the college senior we met in the first chapter, who was looking for a graduate program in religion.
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)…. 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. Not only have I heard many people express interest in combining fields of study, but a friend and I just today discussed the implications that our psychology work (addressing evolutionary attachment and romantic relationships) could have on interpretations of religiosity.
These thoughtful comments and complaints point to difficulties in the study of religion but also reflect the obstacles to pursuing interdisciplinary study throughout colleges and universities.
When I arrived at Columbia in the fall of 2007, the department faced many of the problems Rita so articulately identifies. After conducting a survey of all graduate programs in religion in the United States, we are now developing a curriculum to overcome the fragmentation and lack of communication caused by overspecialization. The challenge is daunting: as we begin, we have ten faculty members and eight subfields—Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, East Asian Religions, South Asian Religions, North American Religions and Philosophy of Religion. In most cases, each subfield is further divided into additional subfields. Until recently, the entire education of a graduate student from admission through comprehensive examinations to thesis was restricted to a single subfield or subfield within a subfield. In many institutions, students are able to complete a PhD in the Study of Religion by translating an esoteric text, developing a critical apparatus consisting of footnotes