50
years of Dual Degree Program:
President Lee
Bollinger
By Joan Baum, Ph.D.
|
(L-R)
Dr. Ismar Schorsch, Chancellor, of JTS; Dr. Shuly Schwartz,
Dean, List College; Peter Awn, Dean, School of General
Studies, Columbia University; Dr. Lee Bollinger, President,
Columbia University |
Articulating Columbia
University's reasons for having initiated a dual degree program
through its School of General Studies with Jewish Theological
Seminary (JTS), and his hope for further and extended collaboration,
Columbia University president, Lee C. Bollinger speaks eloquently
about the arrangement's providing “deep intellectual and religious experiences” for
Columbia and JTS students and being a model for higher education
in general at a time of apparent “increasing secularization
on American campuses, both public and private.” Sensitive
to concerns expressed in some quarters about faith-based initiatives,
President Bollinger acknowledges that some voices in higher
education today are uneasy about too close an accommodation
between religion and the public sphere, but no one could be
more alert to this issue than President Bollinger, whose numerous
scholarly publications include the highly regarded Eternally
Vigilant: Free Speech in the Modern Era (University
of Chicago Press, 2001), Images of a Free Press,
also published by the University of Chicago in 1991, The
Tolerant Society: Freedom of Speech, and Extremist
Speech in America published
by Oxford University Press in 1986.
The President also
teaches a first amendment undergraduate course each fall
on Freedom of Speech and Press (enrollment 150 and growing)
and notes that “students are hungry
for this.” He feels that those who worry about possible
conflicts between religious and secular instruction need not
ignore faith. “Most people manage to live with a combination
of intellectual commitment to Western discourse and deep belief
about God and religion,” he points out, though for sure
tension can mark public debate; all the more reason for bringing
such conversations into the classroom and to promote the Columbia
/ JTS dual-degree program. Indeed, the reason for the institution
of the program in 1953 was to be a “bridge” between
two worlds often considered inconsistent. Now, more than ever,
this mission needs to be understood and supported, it's not
just an “abstract “ idea.
The program has been “spectacularly successful,” he
says, as measured by increasing interest and by the reports of
the current students and alums who spoke at the program's recent
fifty-year celebration and cited not only “intellectual
stimulation” but social bonding. “Why wouldn't students
want to be exposed to experiences that would enrich their lives
outside the classroom?” the President asks. As for attracting
more students and perhaps involving other institutions and
other faiths in a similar program, he's thinking about it,
constrained, of course, by the eternal problems plaguing all
institutions of higher education today: money, housing, space
(tuition is higher for the Columbia-JTS program than for other
interdisciplinary arrangements). Lee Bollinger is also still
relatively new, having assumed the presidency of Columbia only
two years ago (the University's 19th leader). But he is also on the faculty of the
Law School and is interested in considering ways in which courses
in law, for example, might be added to the program. Most
undergraduates, he ventures, are largely unfamiliar with legal
issues common to, and potentially divisive in, religious and
secular education. There's “extensive, untapped knowledge
in legal institutions” that would be attractive to students
in the dual degree program. The president draws an important
distinction, however, between the kind of dual degree program
established by Columbia and JTS, which involves more credits,
and interdisciplinary studies. In
general, he's a strong believer in discipline-oriented curricula,
giving students a solid basis in building knowledge in research,
analysis and evaluation—which is why the program requires
more time to complete, including usually at least a summer
session. That challenge, however, enhances the program and
ensures that liberal arts and religious studies each receive
full concentration.#
