Following last Summer term's well-attended, though sometimes controversial, "Leading Voices in Politics and Policy" lecture series, the College announced the continuation of its "Leading Voices in Higher Education" series, which began in the fall and will focus on scholarship, globalization and ways to improve the student learning experience, according to Denise Anthony, a sociology professor and the chair of the committee. The series is part of the College's strategic planning initiative, Provost Carol Folt wrote in a Jan. 12 campus-wide email.
The summer's 10-part series sponsored by the Office of the President and the Rockefeller Center addressed major topics regarding current public policy and national political debate. This second series, however, will shift its focus to changing trends in higher education worldwide, with an emphasis on the liberal arts.
To select series' speakers, faculty and staff members involved in the strategic planning process considered scholars who have made a substantial impact on their respective fields, according to Anthony. Committee members searched for individuals who would be likely to spark creative discussion and innovation among students, she said.
"President [Jim Yong] Kim charged us with finding new aspirations and visions for Dartmouth," Anthony said.
High-profile speakers in the summer series included U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner '83, former Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, former U.S. Labor Secretary Henry Paulson '68 and Chief Executive Officer of General Electric Jeffrey Immelt '78, whose presentation was met with a group of protesting students, faculty and staff.
Cathy Davidson, a humanitarian scholar and author who will offer the first lecture this term, said she will utilize her book, "Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work and Learn," to provoke dialogue about how higher education will adapt to a new era of digital media.
"There are so many things in the world students face after college that they are not particularly prepared for," Davidson said. "The standardized testing, metrics, concepts and divisions that we currently have were invented in the industrial age and are no longer pertinent to the digital world."
A cofounder of the Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory a network dedicated to exploring learning in the new digital age Davidson has championed the educational campaign for collaborative learning. Focusing on adapting to technological and social changes provides a platform for sharing knowledge and promoting interdisciplinary learning, particularly in a time in which the Internet permeates most aspects of life, she said.
The division between the humanities and sciences is "nonsensical" in the internet age, Davidson said.
"We all use the Internet, yet most of us have very little technical knowledge of how to contribute to it or understand the social implications," she said.
In her lecture, Davidson will discuss the brain and cognitive processes, she said. She also intends to explore the history of education and careers, particularly how the two can be transformed to create opportunities for growth by emphasizing the interdisciplinary nature of the liberal arts.
"The liberal arts education is the dinosaur that has held out against big research universities," Davidson said. "I believe that there will be a resurgence of the liberal arts tradition."
Writer Louis Menand will present the annual Tucker Lecture as part of the series, focusing on the role of literature, morality and the liberal arts education. Menand is a writer for The New Yorker and is a literature professor at Harvard University, according to a College press release. Menand has also taught at Princeton University, Columbia University and the University of Virginia School of Law.
In the final lecture of the term, Ben Wildavsky, senior research scholar at the Kauffman Foundation a nonprofit that researches entrepreneurship will address the role of globalization in higher education. Wildavsky has served as an editor for the guidebooks "America's Best Colleges" and "America's Best Graduate Schools."
"There are a whole set of changes in higher education," Wildavsky said. "Some characteristics include the mobility of students on unprecedented scales, the branching out of American universities and the ever-growing competition with other universities around the world."
Wildavsky said he will discuss the growing anxiety of domestic students to the perceived threat of foreign students. The "worry" that Western schools are "losing our edge" in comparison to schools in countries like South Korea and China is unnecessary because the benefits of globalization exceed its potential risks in the context of higher education, he said.
"The elite colleges and universities provide their students with opportunities to travel and study around the world to get perspective and offer contributions," Wildavsky said. "For researching universities, the barriers of time and physical location no longer exist the way they once did."
Wildavsky said these changes to the world of education could produce a "global meritocracy," enabling students to succeed in an international job market on the basis of talent and skill.
Davidson will speak at 5 p.m. on Jan. 26 in Filene Auditorium. Menand will deliver his lecture on Feb. 16 at 4 p.m., while Wildavsky will speak on Feb. 29. The lecture series will continue during the Spring term and will feature former Princeton dean Nancy Malkiel and social psychologist Roy Baumeister, among other speakers.
Over the summer, students enrolled in a public policy class linked with the Summer term series attended the various lectures and engaged in discussions about the issues highlighted by the speakers.
Steve Smith '13 said the class enabled him and his fellow students to prepare for the lectures and gain necessary context. He and other students interviewed by The Dartmouth, however, said they had not heard of the new installation of the "Leading Voices" series.
