Emily Gaines Buchler, Nov 19
Stephen Hawking famously predicted in 2000, “I think the next century will be the century of complexity.”
Today, the late physicist’s words ring true, given the many large, multilayered problems that exist in our world, from climate change and economic inequality to food insecurity and health care disparities. Addressing problems like these, which are mired in social, economic, ethical, and political concerns, will take teams of people working in tandem across disciplines, utilizing complicated technology to navigate a labyrinth of networked systems, experts say.
To equip students with the skills needed to contribute to durable solutions, Johns Hopkins University recently launched a bachelor of arts in moral and political economy through its Center for Economy and Society at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Agora Institute. The new MPE major, made possible by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, challenges students to investigate and think broadly about the many sides of pressing world problems.
“Individual academic disciplines on their own, whether political science, philosophy, economics, or sociology, are insufficient at tackling some of the biggest challenges of the 21st century,” says Glory Liu, the assistant research professor who helped develop the major and serves as assistant director of the Center for Economy and Society. “Our new major teaches students to consider urgent problems in context—that is, in the social, economic, moral, political, and historical contexts in which they emerged and exist.”
The program gives students both the flexibility to pursue interests and a structured pathway to graduate with a cohesive experience. It consists of 57 credits that start with a two-semester introductory course, Social Theories of the Economy, followed by courses in macro- and microeconomics, a reading seminar, and a research lab. After these foundational courses, students work with faculty to identify a focus area and take nine electives, four of which must fall within their focus track.
“When we created the program, we intentionally set parameters like focus tracks to guide students to think about a specific problem or set of problems and learn how various disciplines approach it,” Liu says.
Currently, students can choose from among 10 broad focus tracks, such as borders and migration, land and environment, finance and trade, and technology and innovation. Alternatively, they can propose their own topic.
The program then culminates with a two-semester senior thesis seminar, during which students engage in peer review and other collaborative activities while writing a mandatory thesis related to their focus track.
So far, more than a dozen students have enrolled and are taking courses—and dozens of others have expressed interest. Enrollment requires an application process “designed to make the program selective and limited in size, with room to scale up and grow over time,” Liu says. The smaller size, she adds, will allow the program’s professors and postdoctoral fellows to work closely with students as they learn the rudiments of research in the social sciences and humanities.
Faculty teaching in the new program include Monica Prasad, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Economic and Political Sociology whose three books explore neoliberal policies (such as tax cuts) in the United States, and Louis Hyman, a professor of political economy in the Department of History in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and a professor at the SNF Agora Institute whose five books delve into the history of capitalism. Additionally, six new postdoctoral fellows will help teach and support undergraduates in the new major, including historian Casey Eilbert and sociologist Mustafa Yavaş, who started this year.
Evolving disciplines and approaches
For Liu and her colleagues Simon D. Halliday, associate director of the Center for Economy and Society, and Angus Burgin, an associate professor in the Department of History, the new major comes at an opportune time, as global crises with ethical, social, political, and economic implications evolve or emerge, from deadly wars to record-high human migration.
“Individual disciplines are powerful and give people research tools to generate new knowledge about the world, but they can be narrowing when it comes to big, complicated problems,” says Burgin, who earned a doctorate in history from Harvard and specializes in the history of intellectual movements and ideas at the intersection of politics and economics in the United States.
“Historians, for instance, don’t typically have sufficient training in economics to engage fully in areas fundamental to economic history, just as economists may lack what they need to engage fully in history, political theory, or philosophy. A goal of the major is to give students foundational tools, methods, and knowledge from various fields in the social sciences and humanities, so they can develop a broader understanding—and take a broader approach—to problem-solving.”
Many individual disciplines are expanding their approaches, Burgin, Liu, and Halliday say, including economics. Halliday, for instance, co-wrote a leading economics textbook, Microeconomics: Competition, Conflict, and Coordination (Oxford University Press, 2022), that traces the field’s evolution from focusing primarily on profits and wealth generation to one that contributes to the greater good of our world.
Capitalism, the book argues, has led not only to enormous wealth but also rampant inequality. As a result, scholars are investigating how to make the capitalist system work more effectively for everyone—a question broached by Halliday and his co-author Samuel Bowles, an economist at the Santa Fe Institute and a former professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
“How can a society’s institutions—its laws, unwritten rules, and social norms—harness people’s pursuit of their own objectives to generate common benefits and to avoid outcomes that none would have chosen?” the authors ask in their book. “The challenge is how to combine freedom—individuals’ pursuit of their own objectives—with the common good, improving the livelihoods of all members of society.”
Read more at: https://hub.jhu.edu/2024/11/19/new-major-in-moral-and-political-economy/
