Spring
1998
Iconoclasm revisited
Soundings is a publication of the School of Humanities and Social Science at MIT
Comments and questions to www-shss@mit.edu
Dean's letter
Dear
Friends,
I am pleased to send you our inaugural issue of soundings, the newly-launched newsletter of MIT's School of Humanities and Social Science. soundings is intended to capture the flavor of life across the entire spectrum of activity in the humanities, arts, and social sciences. It covers developments within individual departments and programs, as well as projects that crisscross our School or connect to others parts of MIT. This is a tall order for any publication. If we succeed in providing you with some sense of the intellectual excitement pervading the School of Humanities and Social Science, then we will have gone a long way towards filling that tall order!
soundings reflects the reality that the School is today healthier, more secure in its identity, and better connected to the rest of MIT than ever before. The quality of its faculty and curriculum has steadily improved over the past decade. Its major departments continue to be among the world's leaders in research and graduate training and are attracting larger numbers of undergraduates. These departments have recruited some of the most talented scholars and teachers in the United States and abroad, and are developing premier programs.
soundings showcases many of the School's new and ongoing initiatives. You will learn about new internship programs that offer our students opportunities to participate in shaping public policies in Washington and conduct scientific research in East Asia and Europe. And you will learn of the individual scholarship and research of our remarkable faculty who, with their students, are expanding the frontiers of knowledge in everything from music, literature, and economics to media and international studies. I can think of no more appropriate place to begin our story than with the contributions of the historian of the American Revolution, Professor Pauline Maier.
soundings also will point to areas of the humanities, arts, and social sciences calling for improvement and innovation. We must continue to attract the highest quality educators and scholars. We must continue to improve the quality of our programs and promote innovative educational experiments. We must do our utmost to reflect the changing demographic trends and growing diversity of our nation and of our student body by strengthening our commitment to recruit women and minorities to our faculty. And we must continue to build MIT's financial base to ensure the exceptionally high quality of our students, faculty, staff, and educational and research programs is maintained — indeed enhanced — in the long-run. The process will be slow because changing any culture, especially one as dominant and pervasive as our own, requires perseverance and patience. But the challenge is one that the School of Humanities and Social Science welcomes. The opportunity to participate in charting MIT's future is something my colleagues and I would not wish to miss.
soundings is edited by Orna Feldman, with the support of the Dean's Office in the School of Humanities and Social Science. Orna comes to the job with long experience in communicating the excitement of learning in the academic environment. I want to welcome her to our community and you to soundings.
Philip S. Khoury, Dean
Copyright © 2000 Massachusetts Institute of Technology