On Feb. 23, 1978, then-Dean of the Faculty Henry A. Rosovsky released a draft proposal to the full Faculty outlining a new curricular plan that would grow to become the Core curriculum that now frames a Harvard education.

Under the plan, undergraduates would be required to take one half-course in eight out of 10 broad areas of study—an attempted remedy for what many perceived as the disintegration of the General Education system, the curricular predecessor to the Core.

Though a vast majority of professors agreed on the need for some basic set of central academic requirements, the exact nature of those requirements was a source of debate at several tumultuous Faculty meetings.

And among students, the proposed curriculum was viewed as putting too much power in the hands of the Faculty to shape what classes they took.

Rosovsky’s proposal was revised—and re-revised—as students and professors registered frequent and often bitter criticisms for reasons both practical and philosophical.

But the Core curriculum ultimately prevailed when, in May of that year, the Faculty voted to adopt a revised version of Rosovsky’s initial proposal.

From Rotten...

The precursor to the Core curriculum was the system known as General Education (Gen Ed), adopted in 1949 during the presidency of James B. Conant ’14.

Originally, it required that students take two courses in each of three academic areas: the humanities, the social sciences and the natural sciences. This was in addition to the Expository Writing (Expos) requirement and a stringent four-semester in-residence language requirement.

In the 1950s and 1960s, however, students demanded more courses dealing with contemporary issues, such as the structure of the American political system and energy development. The Faculty introduced many new Gen Ed courses with narrower foci, but these courses were sometimes criticized as obscure or random.

“There was no principle by which those courses were given,” remembers Kenan Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield ’53. “If a professor was ashamed to give a course in his own department, he gave it in Gen Ed.”

In addition, by the beginning of the 1970s, the Faculty had voted to officially allow students to count departmental courses for Gen Ed credit, a move which some say “diluted” the system.

Rosovsky and his allies felt it was time for change.

In a letter to the Faculty in October 1974, Rosovsky called for a sweeping review of the curriculum, citing the “development of new fields and methodologies,” “changes in the character of the academic profession,” and the “hurried and piecemeal character” of the previous decade’s Gen Ed reforms.

“Part of what motivated the review,” says then-member of the Faculty Council and current Dillon Professor of International Affairs Jorge I. Dominguez, “was the sense that General Education was a set of courses that received very little review from any overseeing entity on the one hand, and moreover could be ignored by students who wanted to take courses in the department anyway.”