Jodie A. Malmberg '94, who is graduating today, is a little concerned about the value of her Harvard education.

"I sometime worry about talking to people and having them say, 'What you've never read Dante and you've graduated from Harvard?''' she says.

Malmberg's worries, professors say, may represent the growing ambivalence about what students should get out of a Harvard education.

Thirty years ago a liberal arts education was defined by the Western canon. The University felt it had a mission to ensure that no student would leave Harvard without a strong basis in Dante, Shakespeare, Plato, and of course, the Bible.

"There was a sense that we worked to a degree in the shadow of great texts," says Charles S. Maier '60 Krupp Foundation professor of European studies.

Now, although many professors say they would like students to leave Harvard well-versed in the cannon, they insist it is not up to the University to impose upon students one particular body of knowledge.

With different perspectives challenging more traditional approaches, professors say freedom to choose what they learn--even if it means graduating without having read The Divine Comedy.

Contemporary Perspectives

The Western canon that so closely shaped a liberal arts education a generation ago is still a foundation of many academic fields, many professors agree.

However, because of the increasing influence of new disciplines such as it was once defined, is too limiting an educational goal.

"It has always seemed to me that this problem of the canon was misstated because it always seemed to me that there are so many things worth knowing," says Professor of Afro-American Studies and of Philosophy K. Anthony Appiah.

"I'm not terribly fond of discussion about the canon," adds Dillon Professor of the Civilization of France Stanley H. Hoffmann. "I think it's trendy. What people consider to be the cannon changes every two or three years. I think much of that is quite vapid."

But with the cannon no longer shaping the basis of a common body of knowledge, nothing has emerged to fill the void.

"I don't think it's our job to define a body of knowledge that is worth knowing," Appiah adds.

And even though professors interviewed were eager to offer informal opinions on the canon at Harvard, many say that the full faculty no longer discusses what students should know upon graduating.