Extension in the Aftermath

by Christopher Queen

As reported in The Lamplighter this year, 63 Harvard Extension School classes were canceled on the night of September 11, distant casualties of the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, DC. Among them was Dr. Dorothy Austin's RELI E-1065/W Psychoanalysis, Meditation, and Spiritual Practice, which nearly doubled in enrollment by October 1. Later, in their evaluations of a course that probed experiences of anger, helplessness, vulnerability, and fear--and ways of overcoming these feelings--many students expressed gratitude to Dr. Austin and the Extension School for offering such a course.

For nearly a year, the events of September 11 have hung like a cloud over the University community. On October 21, President Lawrence Summers, in his fourth month of office, joined Harvard's Muslim community at Friday prayers in Lowell Hall to show respect for "a faith that is committed to peace" but that was "hijacked and stolen" by the terrorists. Numerous special symposia and guest lectures on campus treated the politics of oil, the globalization of violence, and the prospects for peace. At the academic year's end, Harvard College Commencement speaker Zayed Muhammed Yasin made headlines by comparing "the ideals of the American Dream to the Islamic concept of 'jihad,'" telling the audience of 30,000 that the struggle against poverty, oppression, and terrorism was "our American jihad" (Boston Globe, June 7).

At the Extension School, an appearance of normality, measured in the routine exchange of problem sets and homework essays, e-mails, and elevator greetings, was restored by the end of the fall term. But then something unexpected happened--incoming spring-term enrollment data began to reveal a sharp rise of interest in humanities courses like World Religions, Major Authors in the British Literary Tradition: From Beowulf to Virginia Woolf, The History of Boston, 1865 to the Present, Introduction to the History of Art and Architecture II: Renaissance through Modern, Introduction to Metaphysics, and Introduction to Folklore and Mythology. More students were taking World Religions (135) than Design Patterns and Java (126), Principles of Physics II: Electricity and Magnetism, Light, Atomic and Nuclear Structure (115), and Introduction to Organismic and Evolutionary Biology (111), courses that have dominated the enrollment lists in recent years. Could this rise of interest in questions of meaning, value, time, and beauty be a residual effect of 9/11 on the intellectual habits of an academic community?

Enrollments in the humanities had gradually declined in the 1990s as offerings in the premedical sciences, business accounting, and the new fields of computer science and high technology have soared. By 2000-01, the top 20 most popular courses were predictable. They included a small constellation of courses in computer programming, financial accounting, and the premedical courses in chemistry, biology, and physics, while courses in the social sciences, particularly psychology and government, held their own. Only Professor Thomas O'Connor's The History of Boston, 1865 to the Present and Professor Ellsworth Lapham Fersh's Law and Ethics: Making the Moral Decision balanced the emerging dominance of science and business.

Last fall, in the immediate wake of the attacks, the sudden interest in Psychoanalysis, Meditation, and Spiritual Practice was matched by a clear jump in the size of Professor Ali Asani's Introduction to Islam: usually attracting a respectable 20-40 students, the course now swelled to 55. But the broader rise in humanities enrollments of all kinds--history, literature, philosophy, and religion--did not manifest itself until the spring, when the impact of September 11 had sunk into deeper regions of the psyche where perception and planning take place. Now the only courses more popular than World Religions in spring 2002 were Law and Psychology, Financial Accounting Principles, and Introduction to Psychology--also arguably relevant to an understanding of global terrorism. In the end, one can only speculate (scientific conclusions cannot be based on such meager and recent data) that, compared to the three or so humanities courses in the top 20 lists in recent years, the emergence of six large humanities courses in spring 2002 may indicate the Extension School's tentative, exploratory search for answers in the aftermath of the attacks on America.

This year's Alumni Bulletin offers ample evidence of the School's survival and optimism--another kind of response to the uncertainties of the age. Christopher Lydon, former National Public Radio talk-show host and this year's Lowell Lecturer, begins our coverage by recounting his travels in the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia in search of "A Culture Trying to Happen."

Commencement coverage includes addresses by master quiltmaker, Linda Hime Newberry, ALM '02, "An Extension Degree as a Patchwork Quilt," and Harvard Business School Professor, Emeritus, Francis J. Aguilar, whose own metaphor for the educated life, "Cleared for Takeoff," is taken from his experience as a combat pilot in the waning years of the Korean War.

If any doubts remain of the Extension School's vitality and vision in the aftermath of 9/11, the Bulletin's colorful photomontages should resolve them.