Guest post: A Modest Proposal for Departmental Reorganization at Universities

Guest post by Dr. Phage.

We  are all aware of the special alignments of particular academic disciplines.  In “Gender Studies” departments, for example, the listed requirements for majoring in the subject never include any Biology coursework; this is because scholars in this subject do not believe that “gender” has anything to do with Biology.  Similarly, none of the various “This or That Studies” departments require any education in Statistics, because scholars of these disciplines typically define “knowledges” (plural, and including indigenous folk-traditions) in a sense that is independent of what elsewhere is called “data”.  

   Departments are free to define their own subject matter, but I submit that US universities committed a category error when they assigned these departments to the Faculties (or Schools) of Arts and Sciences.  The Sciences, of course, all concentrate on knowledge of the physical world.  And the Arts are no less deeply connected with the physical world: visual Art through the physical materials it uses in painting, sculpture, ceramics, and so on; musical Art through the instruments it uses, and in the physics of sound.  But how, then, can disciplines which assert their complete separation from analysis of the physical world be part of an A & S Faculty?  

   The solution is obvious.  Academies should define a separate School or Faculty of Rhetoric, to include the department of Communications, all the “Studies” departments,  and some other units.  Rhetoric has a venerable academic history, going back to ancient Athens at its height, and much later becoming part of the classic medieval Trivium of university studies.  

Once  “Studies” departments are placed in the Faculty of Rhetoric, their majors will of course receive undergrad degrees of BR rather than BS or BA, better informing putative employers about the nature of their training.  The names of advanced degrees in these disciplines will also be modified to provide such improved information.  Finally, inclusion of these departments in the Faculty of Rhetoric will provide the departments with an intellectual environment appropriate for them.  

   In short, this simple reform of the Faculty assignment of departments will cure 40 years of of ambiguity and confusion in and downstream of the groves of academe.    

 The author was formerly a professor at the University of Washington, first in the A & S Faculty, then in the School of Medicine.  He is currently experiencing an advanced case of emeritis.