Discovering the value of humanistic inquiry

Lily Tsai, the Ford Professor of Political Science, has been named director of MIT's Concourse program, taking over from Anne McCants, the Ann F. Friedlaender Professor of History, who stepped down after 14 years leading the first-year learning community.

Concourse was founded in 1970 so that humanities, engineering, and science faculty could collaborate on curriculum. It accepts 50 first-year students each year and pairs a foundation in the humanities with math and science General Institute Requirement courses taught by Concourse faculty. Readings include Plato, Homer, Aristotle, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. Assistant Director Sasha Rickard, a 2019 alumna of the program, describes it as a mini-liberal arts college within MIT. The program occupies a dedicated space in Building 16 with a classroom, seminar room, lounge, and kitchen, and it holds a weekly Friday advising seminar where students discuss assigned texts or debate over lunch; fall topics center on the human condition, while spring sessions take up issues such as gene therapy, immigration, and gun control. Several debates are run with the MIT Civil Discourse Project, a collaborator since 2023. Senior mathematics student and teaching assistant Johnnie Jones VI says the program draws athletes, humanities enthusiasts, and students with no humanities background.

Senior lecturer Linda Rabieh, who has taught in Concourse since 2010, says AI has made the question of what it means to be human more vivid for students, who are meeting it with new urgency. She argues the program teaches students to reason rigorously about moral and political questions in non-quantitative ways.

McCants is credited by colleagues with steady leadership, a collaborative advising program, advocacy for a whole-student approach, and passionate teaching; she says she will miss sustained conversation with educators from other disciplines, since normal faculty roles tend to be siloed.

Tsai takes over as MIT broadens connections between the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences and other fields through efforts including the Compass Initiative, which she co-leads, the MIT Human Insight Collaborative, and shared faculty positions within the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing.

Why it matters: Concourse gives 50 incoming MIT students per year a humanities-intensive first-year track with continuing roles as TAs, debate fellows, and associate advisors, and its new director arrives as the Institute expands ties between SHASS and computing.