by Ray White, Department of Physics and Astronomy Zakaria’s defense of liberal education largely overlooks one of its main goals: exposing students to a broad range of cultural topics, exceeding their prior experience, in order to help students become more culturally sophisticated and to help them discover how their (perhaps latent) passions and aptitudes may be best realized in life after university. Zakaria instead emphasizes the virtues of a liberal education in developing competence in writing, speaking, critical thinking, and learning to learn. These are indeed […]

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by Steve Kosiba, Department of Anthropology In Defense of A Liberal Education describes the differences between the traditional American model of liberal education, in particular the core curricula of institutions such as the University of Chicago, and the differences between this model and university education in comparable countries, such as England or Germany. The book also describes conservative critiques of the traditional model, which claim that universities might better serve the nation by focusing on technology and science training. If we are […]

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by Trudier Harris, Department of English Higher education is intrinsically elite, but the liberal education that Fareed Zakaria espouses is even more elite. It is a playing field for the middle and upper classes, one that is much more Vassar and Wesleyan than Stillman and Tuskegee. While Zakaria is very much focused on internationalism in his defense of liberal education, he fails to average diversity such as race into his formula—not only as it relates to students but also as […]

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