This article originally appeared in the National Post.
By Peter MacKinnon, December 3, 2025
In recent decades the humanities and social sciences in many of our universities have declined in substance and stature. “Studies” programs, often ideologically slanted and emphasizing victimhood, and the emergence of postmodern influences, have undermined their importance.
A new program at Harvard University offers hope that these influences may not endure. Known as Genuinely Hard Problems in Science, this first-year seminar (15 students in each class) seeks to develop the interdisciplinary and wide perspectives necessary to investigate big and as yet unanswered questions that have challenged researchers for years. “In this class, there is no assumption that scientific authorities are right. Rather than training conformists … the instructors want out-of-the-box thinkers who can blaze new pathways.” The university’s dean of science, Jeff Lichtman, who, with others, teaches the course, explains that it “seeks to pilot a new approach to a scientific landscape that has been reshaped by technology.”
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Peter MacKinnon is a former law professor who has served as the president of three Canadian universities and a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
