Three College of Arts and Science professors took on the challenge of presenting the most convincing case for why their discipline is vital and valuable. David Jon Furbish, professor of Earth and environmental science, made the case for the natural sciences; John Geer, Distinguished Professor of Political Science and interim department chair, championed the social sciences; and Tiffany R. Patterson, associate professor of African American and diaspora studies, upheld the humanities. 

Briefly, what does your discipline contribute to a liberal arts education, and indeed, society?

GEER: Social science lies at the heart of any university because it brings together the best of the humanities and the sciences to advance our understanding of important historical, social, economic and political trends. 

FURBISH: Science, by definition, navigates uncertainty. In turn, because knowledge generated by science so strongly influences the fabric of society—both directly and indirectly through technology and innovations—it makes sense to me that there is tremendous value in learning how science works. There’s also value in discovering how science approaches the issue of uncertainty in knowledge—as a lovely ingredient of scholarship, of lifelong learning, of communication, of making informed choices.

PATTERSON: The humanities approach knowledge by critically analyzing belief systems, culture, memory and imagination. An understanding of the past that created our present, the philosophical questions that informed struggles over values and cultural difference, and the literary and artistic texts that reflect our world are a necessary complement to the other disciplines.

Why is that important? 

GEER: The goal of any liberal arts education is to help students become democratic citizens. The social sciences lie at the center of that effort. 

FURBISH: The natural sciences provide the foundation of technology and technological innovations. Science drives innovations in other fields, including engineering and medicine.

PATTERSON: The humanities provide us with the languages to communicate ideas, to insist upon understanding how human societies have expressed their values and how they solved, or failed to solve, social problems. The humanities also help us to avoid repeating many (if not all) mistakes of the past and to develop enlightened solutions to contemporary problems.

If you had to choose one of the other disciplines as most valuable, which would you choose and why?

GEER: Neither, we already encompass both in the social sciences. We have faculty who take the humanities seriously to advance our understanding, for example, of justice. At the same time, we have faculty who make use of the latest breakthroughs in neuroscience to understand better how personality shapes our social behavior. 

FURBISH: You can’t choose one discipline as more valuable. Together, they form a triad, a triangle. The triangle is mechanically the strongest geometrical construct. Load it, stress it, squeeze it, and a triangle is self-reinforcing, self-stabilizing.

You of course know of the underlying principles of the legislative–executive–judicial triad. You know of the simple beauty of the reinforcing tones—the harmony—of a musical triad. Shall I add here that our triangle is a self-reinforcing structure of a world-class education?

PATTERSON: This is a false choice. Different types of intellectual activity are needed to solve modern problems and to envision a more productive future. No one discipline has a monopoly on all we need to know about the world. To ignore any of the disciplines is to be partially educated and deficient
in our thinking.

What would society look like if one of these disciplines (not necessarily yours) were removed?

GEER: In the long run, we need all three areas of inquiry. Not only do they advance our understanding of a vast array
of topics, ranging from history of art to how stars form, but these disciplines become more vibrant from cross-fertilization. Political science, for example, seeks to inform society about how our political system works, but it does so only after borrowing from related fields such as history, economics, anthropology or genetics. True discovery comes when you break outside of normal lines of inquiry, and that is really only possible with interdisciplinary work.

FURBISH: I agree. Increasingly, innovations aimed at addressing problems of critical societal importance are requiring the effective communication between the natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, law, medicine and engineering.

PATTERSON: Society would be impoverished. Consider how much we’d lose without the advances in science and technology or how important economics is in addressing our current crisis. Knowledge of history and anthropology is crucial in a globalized world if we are to communicate effectively across cultural and religious differences. Language, philosophy and aesthetics enhance our ability to understand a complicated and uncertain world. 

So what would you say to students who protest that they will never use—for example, a class in biology, philosophy or sociology—in their intended careers? 

GEER: Careers are important. But the purpose of a liberal arts education is to teach you to think. Learning how to think creatively is far more important than pursuing a narrow career. Careers, frankly, come and go—just ask all the business majors at financial firms who have lost their jobs. The ability to think, by comparison, is useful for all careers. You never know what life will yield, what new directions you might take. The liberal arts education will prepare you for such journeys. So, take the philosophy class—it will pay dividends in more ways than you can appreciate.

FURBISH: Regardless of one’s educational path, an informed perspective of science is a key ingredient of scholarship, of lifelong learning, of communication, of making informed choices.

PATTERSON: A liberal arts education teaches one perspective and to critically analyze our world and imagine new possibilities. A class in biology, sociology, or poetry, or interdisciplinary fields such as Latin American studies or African American and diaspora studies, will bring unexpected rewards. Take these classes and risk becoming perceptive thinkers and innovative leaders.

The interdisciplinary network integrates faculty and student researchers in natural sciences, social and behavioral sciences, engineering, and law and policy with the goal of uncovering a grass-roots solution to climate change. Members are conducting theoretical and applied research on one of the most important and most widely overlooked sources of greenhouse gases: individual and household behavior.

The 20-plus member network includes, among others, Brooke Ackerly, associate professor, political science; Florence N. Faucher-King, associate professor, European studies and political science; Ford Ebner, professor, psychology; Jonathan Gilligan, senior lecturer, earth and environmental sciences, who also serves as CCRN associate director for research; and Michael Vandenbergh, professor of law and CCRN director. These group members recently discussed climate change, the media, and the role individuals play in averting this crisis. 

What is the biggest obstacle to stopping global warming?

VANDENBERGH: Two things. First is the belief that there is uncertainty about some aspects of the science, so we should not act. The second is the belief that acting requires increasing the role of government in ways that are worse than the harms of climate change.

GILLIGAN: Erosion of trust. People can’t achieve political consensus on what to do because they don’t trust those who disagree with them. They dig in their heels, demonize opponents and produce gridlock.

EBNER: If people accepted the premise of global warming, they would change their everyday lives to produce a sustainable level of resource use. More importantly, they wouldn’t vote for anyone who didn’t espouse environmental sustainability as a high priority national goal.

Is the media’s reporting on climate change accurate?

ACKERLY: Global warming is a much more urgent issue than portrayed in the media. If we fail to address the climate crisis in the near term, I expect our grandchildren will wonder why we didn’t use our resources and resourcefulness to address this crisis before it became irreversible.

GILLIGAN: Yes and no. Where the media often gets it wrong is the timing. The truly catastrophic consequences are unlikely to occur in the next 50 years. For instance, the media doesn’t explain that even in the worst-case scenario, the predicted 80-plus feet rise in sea levels won’t occur for 300 years or more.

FAUCHER-KING: Fake science has been given equal attention and the discussion of scientific facts increasingly politicized. The media remain far too shy [about reporting on the threat of global warming] because they’re too dependent on advertising income from companies that benefit from energy consumption.

What do you say to those who insist climate change isn’t occurring or that it’s part of a natural weather cycle?

EBNER: I point to the fact that no one disputes the fact that the current atmospheric carbon dioxide levels of approximately 380 parts per million are far above the average measured from ice samples over the last 600,000 years. This includes the ups and downs of at least five ice ages. Yet current greenhouse gas levels are far above any prior level, and predicted to go higher. Even so, as long as water comes out of the faucet and the lights switch on, global warming remains too gradual to generate a sense of urgency about a warming planet in most people.

VANDENBERGH: There is certainty that increased carbon dioxide levels will increase temperatures and that the source is the burning of fossil fuels, forest burning and other activities. The only real question is how quickly the change will occur and how massive it will be. By the time there’s absolutely no doubt about global warming, the game will be up.

FAUCHER-KING: These people haven’t been paying attention. Some delude themselves when confronted with troubling events, taking an “it can’t happen to me” position. They think global warming is too challenging, that someone else will fix it. Those are fatalist, defeatist and amoral positions.

If people were to commit to one permanent change to slow global warming, what would it be?

ACKERLY: Why make one big sacrifice when many little changes add up? Biking or taking the bus to work, having a “local” vacation, eating more fruits and vegetables and less meat make a difference. At my house, we sealed the ductwork so we’re not paying to heat and cool our basement and we weather-stripped our windows. I never idle my car.

EBNER: Reducing demand for fossil fuels can make a difference, including the energy needed for transportation and electricity that mainly comes from coal-fired steam generators.

GILLIGAN: Drive less and use less electricity—these are directly responsible for about one-third of all carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. This personal use is larger than all the industrial emissions in the U.S. combined.

Do you believe it is already too late to slow or stop climate change?

GILLIGAN: The urgency of climatic change is that greenhouse gases remain in the atmosphere for centuries to millennia after we release them. We must act urgently today to prevent a catastrophe 100 years or more in the future. If we wait until we see the catastrophe starting, it will be decades too late.

EBNER: We can make individual changes, but we also desperately need a new attitude in leadership at the federal level. Elections are coming, and we should all ask each candidate what he or she proposes to do at the federal level about global warming.

ACKERLY: After Australia (which, like the U.S., relies heavily on coal for electricity), the U.S. has the highest per capita carbon emissions. This is due to the amount of energy we use and the way our energy is produced. We can reduce our individual non-productive energy use, but only a few individuals can make the energy they use cleaner—by purchasing solar panels, for example. The nation as a whole will need to clean up its energy sources if we are going to reduce our carbon footprint. With public investment in the infrastructure necessary to have a national electricity grid, market forces will lead to increased production of, and demand for, carbon-free energy, as well as increased employment in the building of a carbon-free energy infrastructure.  

VANDENBERGH: It seems clear that human-induced climate change is already occurring and some parts of further change are unstoppable. My hope is that we still have a decade or two before we pass the point of no return. If we miss that point, we’ll have to deal with the knowledge that we have set into motion tens of feet of sea level increase that will occur for centuries to come. Yet, with small lifestyle changes and a several percent reduction in gross domestic product, all of this could have been avoided. It’s not a great legacy to leave to our grandchildren.

David Bader, Gladys P. Stahlman Professor and professor of medicine, cell and developmental biology, and John G. Geer, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, bring the question to the classroom with their team-taught course, Genetics and Politics.

A hot button this campaign year, the issue (and class) has garnered attention from national media. Bader and Geer explore the topic with their students, along with input from outside authorities and Vanderbilt faculty such as Marc Hetherington, an associate professor of political science. The class has hosted experts such as University of California at San Diego researcher James Fowler, who has used studies of twins to link voting behavior to genetics.

We asked the professors and a few of their guests to explain the issue.

So, is there a relationship between genes and politics?

Bader: It’s hard to imagine but the genome and the environment are inexorably linked. They don’t make sense without each other. Your genes are the product of the body’s response to nature.

Geer: (Yet) political behavior is complicated. The idea that there is a genetic component suggests that it is one factor. The idea that genes shape behavior is a general tendency. It won’t predict specific behavior.

Fowler: Genes are the institutions of the human body. They constrain what is possible and they set the rules. Studies of genetics and politics are throwing political science into three dimensions and demonstrating that genes may play a role in voting behavior and that shared environment may not matter at all.

So campaigning for voters is moot because our genes already know for whom we’re going to vote before we do?

Bader: Your genome is set at conception—you are who you are, but that doesn’t mean the expression of your genes is invariant. While your genes don’t change, the way they’re used is constantly changing. No species is a robot to its genes.

Hetherington: There are more explanations than one to understanding political behavior. While people have many predispositions that probably are linked to genes, they can act in different ways, depending on different circumstances. How those predispositions mix with environment will tell us more than the predispositions alone.

Geer: If genes do drive behavior, perhaps we should be less worried about red and blue states [and recognize] that such outcomes have a deeper cause, that the differences we have are not just because we choose to disagree, but because we naturally disagree.

But what if my parents are Republicans and I’m a Democrat? Does that blow apart the genetic connection?

Hetherington: If the genetic link were clear, we ought to see overlaps in behavior between parent and child, but it doesn’t always happen. The son may have had different experiences. Maybe he’s surrounded at college by Obama supporters while his parents hang out among McCain supporters. The son has grown up in a more racially tolerant time. These kinds of things have an impact on behavior, too.

Bader: Perception in humans may also be regulated in the same way (as voting behavior). We just don’t know what those genes are quite yet.

Geer: If my parents are responsible for my political behavior, they have a lot to answer for. It’s not fair that I look like my father and am voting like him, as well.

So it comes down to a chicken and egg conundrum? There’s no precise way to know whether genes or environment are driving the political process?

Geer:One’s environment matters as does the interaction of genes and the environment. [For example, Geer predicts the state of the economy and whether U.S. troops are still fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, not genetics, are likely to be the overriding forces in play in the fall 2008 elections.]

Hetherington: Is there a tipping point between genes and environment? I can’t say for certain. I do think that threat plays an important role in political behavior. The more widely people feel threatened, the more alike they are going to act.

Bader: Being a Democrat or Republican can mean different things at different times. The litmus test for political affiliation changes. Human traits like altruism and dogmatism may be more closely driven by our genetic background, while being a Democrat or a Republican may be more distantly associated.