Course
Liberal Education: A Contested Question
Instructors
- Robbie Shilliam, Professor, Department of Political Science
- Benjamin Storey, Senior Fellow and Ravenel Curry Chair in Civic Thought, American Enterprise Institute (AEI)
Course description
The course brings together divergent perspectives around a set of landmark texts about liberal education, touching on both enduring questions about the character of liberal education, and contemporary political controversies over what colleges and universities ought to be teaching.
What is liberal education, and what should it be? If such an education liberates, what does it liberate from? How does that liberation happen? What virtues does liberal education cultivate? What are its characteristic pitfalls? How does liberal education relate to the contemporary debates of political life, and how might it serve the public good?
The course is part of a grant program designed to facilitate collaboration between Johns Hopkins faculty members and scholars from AEI, a leading center-right think tank, by modeling intellectual pluralism in teaching, research, and extracurricular endeavors.
Teaching this course with Professor Shilliam has reminded me, and I hope the students, that the search for understanding itself can be a ground for human community and friendship, even where political perspectives diverge.”
Benjamin Storey, Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
It’s been fantastic teaching with Professor Storey. We entered the subject through a door that I never would have opened first, and our collective journey through the materials is all the more enriching for it.”
Robbie Shilliam, Professor, Department
of Political Science
Student voices
“This course has reshaped how I understand education itself. It has made meaning central to learning, pushing me to reflect on who I am, what I value, and how the knowledge I gain should guide my life and my contribution to a greater society. Rather than treating education as a requirement, it has shown me that it is a lifelong pursuit that forms character and deepens responsibility.”
—Jude Mohamed ’27, Political Science
“Having two professors with two different philosophies co-teach a class centered on a question as fundamental as ‘What is a liberal education’ is, in my opinion, itself an exemplary answer to that very question. The seminar-style format and the intellectual diversity of the texts and figures we study have expanded both the breadth and depth of our class conversations and exposed me to perspectives I would not otherwise encounter in other courses.”
—Aneesh Swaminathan ’27, Molecular and Cellular Biology; Political Science
