With so much attention to the issue of inequality and its documented growth in the United States and elsewhere, why join the fray? What more is there to say? Quite a bit,…
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From Our Archives
What Does Society Need from Higher Education?
by Items Editors
A new essay by Richard Arum and Eleanor Blair, and responses from Lisa Anderson and Thomas Schwandt to Kenneth Prewitt’s inaugural Items essay, engage in different ways with the social responsibility of higher education. Here, we republish a 1993 essay from our archives by then-president David Featherman about role of higher education as it was being debated in the early post–Cold War era. There are more than a few echoes of today’s debates in Featherman’s account, which engages with questions of internationalization, scholarly collaboration, and student learning in a globalized context.
From Our Archives
The Social Sciences in Cuba
by Items Editors
Twenty years before the Council began its Cuba work, Louis Goodman contributed a piece to Items that survey the state of the social sciences in Cuba in the 1970s. From our archive, we republish Goodman’s article here alongside the new contribution from Hershberg and Katz.
From Our Archives
Open the Social Sciences
by Items Editors
In recognition of the twentieth anniversary of Open the Social Sciences, Items republishes Immanuel Wallerstein’s essay from 1996 that summarized that report’s key findings. Wallerstein, who chaired the commission that produced Open the Social Sciences, reflects on the nineteenth century origins of the social science disciplines, their historically contingent nature, and the need to transcend the ways in which they divide the production of social knowledge.
From Our Archives
A Note on the Origin of “Interdisciplinary”
by Items Editors
In this brief 1986 essay from the Items archive, David L. Sills, SSRC (and Items) editor from 1973 to 1989, examines the Council’s historical role as a source of the term “interdisciplinary.” Digging into Council records and correspondence, he finds much evidence of debates on interdisciplinarity as a concept, but not (yet) the term itself.