Cross-posted from
Free Exchange on Campus.
David Horowitz et al have been on a tirade about liberal bias in higher education, pointing to what they see as an inappropriate focus on issues such as diversity, biased programs such as peace studies, or professors who look critically at our country’s priorities and policies. So, one wonders what our friends over on the extreme right-wing would think about the article in the Washington Post Magazine, “The Education Review,” about the remarkable Poverty Studies program that is being run at Washington and Lee University.
Want to guess that the response will involve the “liberal media”? Particularly since, as we reported a week ago, the Post also just ran a great story about two professors, one Israeli and one Palestinian, co-teaching a course on conflict resolution. Whatever.
On the other hand, they might point out that this program’s success is due to the fact that W&L is just their kind of university—private, generally conservative, mostly white and a school that “in some media and college rankings, turns out among the most CEOs, corporate presidents and political leaders per capita of any university in the nation.” Or perhaps, this is simply a case study of the kind of amazing, everyday work that happens in our colleges and universities—sometimes on this kind of programmatic level, but often just in the relationships that develop between faculty members and students.
So, what exactly is going on at W&L? I cannot begin to do justice to this article, but for those who don’t have the time to read the whole thing here is a (kind-of) quick summary.
THE SHEPHERD PROGRAM for the Interdisciplinary Study of Poverty and Human Capability is that rare kind of thing that can change your life. It is, its founders say, the only program of its kind in any undergraduate institution in the country. Any student in any major can sign up, but to earn the program's certificate, one must do not only the academic work -- reading liberal and conservative thinkers on theories of poverty and attending lectures on what it is to be poor -- but also complete a rigorous eight-week summer internship. Side by side with undergrads from Berea College, a largely low-income school in Kentucky, and from the historic black colleges of Morehouse and Spelman in Atlanta, they work, live with and live like the poorest of the poor, subsisting on $10 or less a day and bunking at institutions like the District's N Street Village women's shelter.
The article talks about students who came to W&L with clear intentions to head into medical school, investment banking, law—all of which might be expected at an elite university. But somewhere along the way, they make a different choice based on exposure to this program. The article profiles Ingrid Easton in particular, who ended up in the program after taking “Poverty 101” with Professor Harlan Beckley because her sister told her he was “a good teacher.” How often do we hear that story? “I ended up doing what I was doing because I had this prof who . . .”
And despite recent reports, that our universities aren’t innovative enough, the Post reports that the internship required for this program “rattles” students.
Going in to the poverty program, Quiana thought it wouldn't teach her anything new. Then last summer, for her internship, she found herself in Marvell, Ark., where the train tracks literally divided the town between black and white, rich and poor, working and not.
Her job was to survey poor blacks in the unincorporated part of town to see if they wanted the city to run sewer lines to their homes. She confronted a fatalistic hopelessness she'd never seen before. "Sort of like, 'It's always been this way, what do you want us to do about it?' " she says. One afternoon, leaving one broken-down home and walking to the next, following the drainage ditches that ran with open sewage, she sat down and cried.
"How can we live in a country like this?" she remembers thinking. That night, she called her mother and said, "Now, I've seen real poverty."
And so, here we have a program that attracts some of the country’s best and brightest students not to go in to the business of self-promotion, but rather to turn their talent to helping address “the growing economic divide in the country,” or at a minimum, “understand how their profession impinges and impacts poverty.” Sounds like a program a few leaders we know could use.
Of course now W&L will have to be careful or they are going to be on a list as one of those troublesome "liberal institutions" given the influence of the Shepherd Program on W&L itself.
The Shepherd Program is even getting to the venerable Washington and Lee. Since its classes began in 1997, the curriculum has expanded from two offerings to nearly 20 throughout the entire school. Now, there are English classes to study the theme of poverty in literature, economics classes that dissect wage inequality or the economics of race and class, and psychology courses to examine the effects of poverty on children. The university is now also much more actively recruiting minority students and expanding financial aid to bring in more students from low-income families.
"We're seeing a sea transformation," says Arthur Goldsmith, Ingrid's economics professor, who teaches one of the courses. "The Shepherd Program is influencing what we teach, who we hire. A lot of things have been changing."
Hmm, what will Horowitz and company have to say to all of this? “Phew, at least it is the only program of its kind!" Or maybe: “What are we going to do? Sounds like qualified faculty members, teaching a ‘balanced curriculum’ and still students are choosing to help others?” For sure we can hear folks moaning, “Oh no! Now it’s poverty studies.” Yes it is, and W&L should be commended for nurturing such a program.