Geoffrey Brennan’s class on the Prisoners’ Dilemma and Distributive Justice is on the move—literally.
This week, class meetings shifted location from Duke to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For students, further changes are afoot, since the course is the gateway for a new certificate program in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, which won the Arts and Sciences Council’s approval March 10.
The program “puts together the things you need to understand how the world works and also shows how they fit together,” said Alex Rosenberg, R. Taylor Cole professor of philosophy, who took a leading role in organizing the new certificate.
Scholars at Duke and UNC are working together to put the PPE program in motion. Many Tar Heels have been riding the Robertson Bus to Duke twice a week for the first half of the semester to join in the class. The course is also required for UNC’s new PPE minor, which was recognized last fall.
“[PPE] seems both a good fit with Duke and with UNC and with the kind of interests that a lot of our students have,” said Provost Peter Lange, who spurred the program’s creation in part to entice Brennan to the Triangle this year and to make use of the professor’s unusually broad range of expertise across all three disciplines.
Rosenberg called Brennan “a very well known political philosopher, political economist.” He paused and then added, “It’s very hard to pigeon-hole him.”
Brennan, Nannerl Keohane Distinguished Visiting Professor and director of the new program, holds part-time appointments in both the political science department at Duke and the Department of Philosophy at UNC. At least initially, Brennan will instruct the gateway class and the capstone seminar during the spring semesters he spends away from his native Australia.
To earn the certificate, undergraduates must take the gateway and capstone courses and six additional classes divided equally among economics, political science and philosophy. They will also need to complete a major in one of the three departments and take prerequisites in economics and political philosophy.
“It’s clear, given the workload, that this isn’t a free ride,” Rosenberg advised.
It is likely a select number of undergraduates will be eligible to take the capstone course to complete the certificate requirements as early as Spring 2006, Brennan said. He added that undergraduates will benefit from an interdisciplinary approach to these subjects.
Over the last 20 years, Brennan explained, scholars in philosophy, political science and economics have increasingly explored the interrelations among the fields.
“When students see the same sort of phenomena being dealt with from different disciplinary approaches, then they get a sense of what’s distinctive about their own approach,” Brennan said.
Although Brennan suggested that the program would be successful if only 10 students from each of the two universities earned the certificate each year, his estimate may turn out to be low.
“We started out with the idea of a very small program... and the demand skyrocketed,” Rosenberg said. “We can’t afford to make it much bigger without making significant investment in faculty and infrastructure.”
Sophomore Genevieve Ding needed little encouragement to take the gateway class, since she said she has a long-standing interest in the overlap among these subjects. She even encouraged a friend, sophomore Mikey Muhanna, to enroll.
A double major in economics and philosophy, Muhanna cited the scarcity of other courses cross-listed in both his majors as one reason for his interest. Now, the sophomore added, he will probably complete the certificate.
“When [the certificate] came up, I wanted to do it,” Muhanna said.
Rosenberg hopes the PPE certificate will attract “smart, motivated, industrious and well-informed students who want to think outside the box,” and he noted that many students he taught in the Biotechnology and Society FOCUS program have expressed interest to him.
Brennan said attracting student and faculty participants from across the three disciplines and two universities is vital to the program’s success.
“What I would really like is to have a mix of UNC and Duke students and to have a mix of the various disciplines,” he added.
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