Universities: Generalist's Elysium

The oddest graduate school in the U.S. is a far-out arm of the University of Chicago called the Committee on Social Thought. Physically, it is a dingy office under the eaves of the social science building. Its faculty, which includes Novelist Saul Bellow and Political Scientist Hannah Arendt, numbers only eleven. But its goal is as big as the world. While other graduate schools atomize knowledge, this one aims toward "a unification of knowledge and a revealing of the human being as a whole."

The committee is a generalist's elysium, a haven for "eccentrics" commanded to "think in new areas." If they do, the school gives them the degree of Doctor of Social Thought. The committee vaguely counts "somewhere between 20 and 25 students" on the campus; others are loose in Europe ("We hope they're working"). The motto is "freedom," and the result is one of the world's liveliest intellectual experiences.

Back in 1942, when Chicago's physicists were brewing atomic energy in the squash courts under the football stands, Chancellor Robert Hutchins and three top scholars proclaimed themselves "the Committee on Civilization" and set out to found a graduate program in "interrelation." Anthropologist Robert Redfield changed "Civilization" to "Social Thought," explaining: "I haven't the slightest idea what it means, but I think I can get it set up under that title."

Unified Knowledge. According to Chicago's catalogue, social thought now is "understood to refer to the ideas concerning the intellectual and moral foundations of society." According to Economist-Historian John U. Nef, 64, the committee's co-founder chairman, the aim is to combat the kind of blind specialization that an Oxford don once illustrated by boasting: "At last I have written a really good book. Not only will nobody read it. Nobody can read it."

To earn a degree in social thought, students must prove that ordinary graduate work is too narrow for the "unifying" idea that consumes them. Any field is legitimate, including art, poetry or music. Without blinking, the committee has, for example, taken on explorers of innocence in 19th century America, Islamic dissenters in the Middle Ages, Chinese intellectuals and the West, and "the theory of self-love" in economics.

To handle such versatility, the faculty itself is a sort of vest-pocket university. Friedrich Hayek, the non-Keynesian economist, was a longtime regular. Hannah Arendt, a recent catch, is a famed expert on totalitarianism. Novelist Bellow is there, he says, because of his "interest in social questions. I like to keep in touch."

Others include Mathematician Marshall Stone, son of the late Chief Justice, and Arabist Marshall Hodgson, author of The Assassins. James Redfield, son of the founder, is a classicist with a bent for cultural anthropology. Mircea Eliade is a professor of the history of religions, a Jungian psychologist, a novelist in Rumanian, and the envy of his students for being able to "drink whisky all night and never drop a line of conversation."