The Luce Professorship affords an opportunity to create
courses rarely available to undergraduates. In all Program activities, I strive to demonstrate that a
deep understanding of a topic like reproduction requires perspectives from many disciplines
and professions.These include not only the disciplines of "biology, ethics, and politics"
in the Professorship's title, but the humanities, social sciences, philosophy, and religion,
supplemented by insights from the human services, medicine, and law. By introducing readings, speakers,
and class activities from these different perspectives in each course, students use
knowledge and training from areas in which they feel competent while gaining exposure
to ways of thinking with which they may be unfamiliar. Science, social science, and
humanities students learn from one another and learn that no one disciplinary training
suffices for making sense of complex subjects. Ideally, as they discover what each
discipline contributes to understanding one topic, students recognize the uniqueness
and value of these different approaches for illuminating any other human concerns.
-Adrienne Asch