Students Said a Keystone Course Was Racist. Here’s What Professors Did About It.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of Humanities 110 at Reed College. For more than 70 years, the course, required of all freshmen at the liberal-arts college in Portland, Ore., has been both a shared experience and an intellectual cornerstone.

It has also been at the center of intense controversy. For the past year and a half, the course — “Introduction to Humanities: Greece and the Ancient Mediterranean” — has been under fire from student protesters who say it’s racist because it elevates the history of Europe over that of other areas of the world.

The debate over Humanities 110 has been acrimonious enough that The Atlantic saw fit to characterize the situation, in which fellow students pushed back against the protesters, as a “surprising revolt at the most liberal college in the country.”

A series of in-class protests interrupted some lectures and made some faculty members at the front of the class uncomfortable, including an assistant professor of English and humanities who said her existing post-traumatic stress disorder made it difficult for her to face protesters.

On Wednesday, partly in response to the protests, Reed announced plans to overhaul its signature course. Athens and the ancient Mediterranean will remain on the syllabus, but they will share it with two new modules, on Mexico City from the 15th to 20th centuries and on Harlem from 1919 to 1952.

Elizabeth Drumm, a professor of Spanish and humanities and chair of the course, talked with The Chronicle about the changes. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q. Why is Humanities 110 so important at Reed?

A. We celebrate the humanities. Humanities 110 is a common experience. For example, this week we have the annual Humanities 110 play. It’s a silly parody of the course. The premise is a student is studying for the exam, or forgets to study for the exam, or something like that, and is visited by all the figures from the course over the years. One of my favorite bits was students portraying a debate between Herodotus and Thucydides.

This is part of culture. I’m going to this play tonight. Pedagogically, in my upper-level courses, I know there is a common body of knowledge the students have. That is tremendously useful. Even during the protests, we didn’t go a class without someone saying something like, “It’s interesting how Cervantes is recalling Ovid here.”

Q. How will the course be revamped?

A. We’re moving to this four-module system. We’ve been mulling this for several years. It allows us to make incremental changes to the course. Also, while the faculty’s position has been that the current course is not about the greatness of Athens — we’re precisely trying to critique that model — the students don’t find the argument convincing. So now, with the four modules, we’re decentering the material we present, and no module is privileged over another. We still have a defined historical sweep, which I think is important.

Q. What are you giving up? What’s being lost with this change?

A. That’s a question I’ll be better able to answer next year. In the current course, I really like the density in time and place over the year. Some folks are sorry to lose that. We’re trying to retain a sense of that in these modules, because they are historically contextualized. Some faculty were worried we’d lose this sense of continuity — generations of Reed students had this introductory course based in the ancient Mediterranean. I really respect that concern. We’re going to review it in three years, and we’ll see what happens.

Q. There were in-class protests that received a lot of national attention last year, including some in which lectures were interrupted. In-class protests are rare. Why did Reed allow the protests to go on in the classroom?

A. I would distinguish two types of protest. There was a sit-in of the course last spring. Students sat quietly in a lecture hall and did not disrupt the lecture. We decided in a unanimous vote — and not much happens in a unanimous vote — to allow the lecturers to decide whether they wanted to lecture in that situation, and the rest of us would respect that decision.

Every lecturer decided to go on with the lecture, with different degrees of comfort. Protest is important. These students were clearly committed to this. They were largely respectful that the course needed to continue but felt strongly that the content needed to change. This fall things escalated, and the student protesters wanted to introduce themselves and verbally interrupt the lecture.

Q. So you were OK with an in-class sit in, but not OK with actual vocal interruptions in class?

A. Correct. I have to say, the protesters didn’t see it that way. They saw it as an introduction of their organization, Reedies Against Racism, as part of the first lecture. We were introducing the course, and they thought they should be able to introduce themselves as well. That was the disagreement.

Q. To some, the situation at Reed is Exhibit A that students are becoming increasingly illiberal about speech on college campuses, and that colleges are moving to coddle them. Is that a fair narrative?

A. I don’t think so. These are students who got up at 9 in the morning, three days a week, and sat quietly with signs offering a different approach to the humanities. I think we need to engage these questions. These are legitimate questions. This is part of what we do. We want students to be actively involved in what they’re learning. We want professors to be actively involved in what they’re teaching.

Q. How did you go about making major changes in a course that’s so important to the campus?

A. Last spring we had meetings between faculty and members of Reedies Against Racism. It was information-gathering. From the students’ perspective, it was a little frustrating. From what I understand, the students thought the faculty members were making decisions. We don’t operate that way. We have to talk about it a lot and try to come to consensus. We had more than 30 meetings to reach a consensus.

Q. Some of the protesters wanted to move away from Athens entirely and go to Jerusalem and Cairo. Was there discussion of that?

A. Yes. Down the road, maybe we will. We talked in more detail about Jerusalem. That ended up being problematic, because as a unifying factor, it’s not as straightforward as you think. I like the idea of Cairo. Maybe we’ll do that in the future. It allows for all sorts of possibilities. Somebody suggested Las Vegas or Detroit.

Q. Las Vegas, really?

A. No. it was thrown out there for fun. But it is interesting to think about. Why Harlem? Why not Detroit? Did we consider it seriously? No. But it’s interesting to think about.

Q. Do you have any advice for others who might be considering a curricular change? What did you learn from this?

A. In my 20-plus years, we’ve never considered a change at this level. There were no processes in place, so it was really unnerving. There, my best bet was just, at every step and at the end of every meeting, I made sure to say, “OK, so the next step is this. Any suggestions? Are we all on board with this?” And just get buy-in along the way, more or less successfully. Now we have a subcommittee working to establish processes for adopting new modules over the next three years. So that will be in place beforehand, and we won’t be creating it as we go. That certainly would help.

Vimal Patel covers graduate education. Follow him on Twitter @vimalpatel232, or write to him at vimal.patel@chronicle.com.