A recent speech by President-elect James Wright, in which he stressed the importance of research at Dartmouth, has become a cause of anxiety for many students indoctrinated in the belief that the College should not waver from its commitment to undergraduate teaching.
However, in the end of history when the universal triumph of liberal democracy has finished man's ideological battle, research -- especially in computer science and the natural sciences, along with mathematics as their foundation -- is the raison d'etre of an elite educational institution like Dartmouth. No longer torn between monarchs and republics or communists and capitalists, man has now only two purposes: to conclude the Baconian project to conquer nature and to engage in the Hobbesian pursuit of "commodious living." We therefore cannot continue to dabble in the humanities that yield no useful insights. Instead, we must channel our entire intellectual energy into the advancement of the three "master" sciences.
Unfortunately, we have failed in this regard. Dartmouth, with its historically misguided emphasis on liberal arts, is now light-years behind the major American research institutions in these fields. Barring chemistry, our natural science programs are mediocre, and our computer science department, albeit with a few high-profile professors like Thomas Cormen, pales in comparison with its counterparts in the likes of Carnegie Mellon, Cornell and MIT. Unless we expand and pour money into these programs, whose common characteristic is their enormous fixed costs, our currently commendable reputation will not survive into the next century.
This is because, today, the brightest youths receive secondary schooling in C++, differential equations and advanced physics -- not Homer, Plato or Aristotle, with years of training in Latin and/or Greek. Dartmouth thus cannot afford its obsession with liberal arts without losing such students. The overwhelmingly mathematical and scientific backgrounds of early inductees into Phi Beta Kappa Society in recent years, for instance, clearly show the powerful trend elevating the status of the master sciences.
The best students will come to Dartmouth if it fosters strong research programs in these fields, regardless of the quality of its undergraduate teaching, because such students do not need to be taught. Overflowing with intense, insatiable curiosity, they explore intellectually on their own, always going far beyond what is assigned in class, while the mediocre masses study only for exams. What they do need, however, is superb faculty to work with, as well as excellent facilities and ample funding for research -- precisely what Dartmouth lacks.
Disciplines like philosophy and religion, on the other hand, have no value, in spite of what scholars in these areas say to justify their existence. They cry, for example, that their examination of human nature or social constructs will be useful in responding to the great technological challenges of modernity. However interesting these scholars may find the writings of Durkheim, Marx, Nietzsche or Weber to be, the extraordinary students in the master sciences -- the only ones in school with the potential to make real impacts on society -- care less, for they have no time for frivolity. If contemplation is disparaged by the very individuals whose ambitions tamed by philosophical reflection may do good to the world, it has no value.
Besides, an academic environment with an insignificant humanities curriculum will not extinguish the drive of the philosophically-inclined. Man, by nature, seeks answers to the unknown, and even the pervasive liberal democratic culture of the "last man" cannot eradicate a passion as powerful as curiosity. Consequently, there will always be thinkers. And just as the great computer science students need no formal guidance, students predisposed to thinking need not be told to delve into life's profound issues.
But if the insights of the philosophically-inclined are to have any influence on the extraordinary glory-seekers who naturally belittle the powerless -- including those who reflect on what ought to be, as opposed to what is -- the members of the two sides must be brought together to communicate with one another, in the hope that they will discover mutual respect. Otherwise, with today's tremendous technologies, unphilosophical great men and women, uninhibited, will undertake projects with devastating implications -- like the manufacturing of human beings. At Dartmouth, however, where the philosophically-inclined ones abound and the extraordinary ones are virtually nonexistent, the former ends up practicing meaningless intellectualism.
In the short run, Dartmouth would suffer from its abandonment of quality undergraduate teaching, supplanted by a new commitment to research. But when its graduates begin to bring back scales of money only Harvard can expect, and its professors start to win Nobel prizes, the College would rise further not only in terms of its reputation, but also in terms of its contributions to humanity. Dartmouth would then rise to the ranks of Harvard commanding universal respect -- from its current status as a factory that churns out only management or political talent.
