Dr. Anthony Fauci has been getting a lot of attention lately for his tireless work promoting public safety measures in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Polls consistently find that Dr. Fauci is by far the most trusted person in the United States on matters pertaining to COVID-19. An article published in The New Yorker on 20 April 2020 hails him as “America’s doctor.” On 10 December 2020, Time magazine named him a “Guardian of the Year,” along with “front-line health care workers.”
An interesting thing that many people don’t know about Dr. Anthony Fauci, though, is that he graduated in 1962 from the College of the Holy Cross not with a standard pre-med degree, but with Bachelor of Arts (BA) in classics with a pre-med track. In other words, Dr. Fauci has a degree in classical studies.
Dr. Fauci on his background in the classics
Dr. Fauci has spoken publicly many times about how his early education in the classics played an important role in shaping him as a person and his humanistic approach towards medicine. He believes that practicing medicine requires knowing about science, but also knowing about human nature, and he thinks it is important for people who are going into medicine to be familiar with the humanities. In a 2015 interview with the American Association of Immunologists Oral History Project, Dr. Fauci said this:
“I was born and raised in Brooklyn, went to elementary school in Brooklyn, Catholic elementary school, and then from there went to a Jesuit High School in Manhattan which was an all-scholarship high school run by the Jesuits, called Regis High School, very much steeped in the classics, Greek, Latin, Romance language, ancient history, with some science.”
“So, although I was interested in medicine while I was in high school, it was in the backdrop of a humanities background, and I actually extended that in college and went to another Jesuit college, Holy Cross, College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, which was a very interesting hybrid of doing classics again, with Greek, Latin, French, philosophy, together with just enough science courses to get into medical school, and from there I went into medical school.”
An extended segment about Dr. Fauci aired by NPR on 16 April 2020, based on extensive interviews with Dr. Fauci himself, talks about why Dr. Fauci believes it is important for physicians to be familiar with the humanities and to have a humanistic perspective:
“Fauci spent a lot of his life studying Latin and Greek and Romance languages and philosophy. He was very deeply concerned with the humanities. He wasn’t a guy just saying, ‘What are the English courses I need to take to graduate so I can go to medical school?’ It was pretty much the inverse. He was saying, ‘What are the science courses I need to take to go? Because these other things are also very important.’”
“Infectious diseases are diseases that spread among people, and that is a discipline that requires a sort of social interaction. There are some medical disciplines where you can go in and do your job. If you’re a surgeon, you’ll take things out and maybe you have good bedside manner and maybe you don’t, but what we really care about is are you good with your hands?”
“That’s not as true with the type of doctor that Fauci is. … He certainly has said — and said to me — that the combination of the humanities and science seemed to push him towards being a certain type of physician. Because physicians are people who interpret science and deliver it to people — but they need to do it in a human way. They need to do it in a way that people understand, and I think we all know that is sometimes in short supply.”
In an interview with National Geographic in May 2020, Fauci himself talked about how his entire approach to medicine is deeply rooted in his formative humanities training, saying:
“I almost never had any other inkling of doing anything except something that would have a public service component to it. I’m very much of a people person, but I’m also scientifically inclined. My entire training is steeped in the humanities, and when you combine that with an aptitude for science, you wind up being a physician.”
In a recorded conversation with a group of students at the College of the Holy Cross on 6 October 2020, Dr. Fauci talked about how his study of Greek philosophy in particular led him to pursue a career in public service. He said this:
“You know, as I’ve often described many, many times, I found myself more interested because of the classics. You know, I took that unusual pre-med course at Holy Cross, which was labelled at the time ‘AB Greek comma pre-med,’ in which I took more philosophy courses than I took science courses. So I always felt that I was more interested in human nature than I was in human physiology.”
This list could go on. In practically every interview he’s given about his life, Fauci has talked about the importance the humanities had in shaping him.
ABOVE: Photograph of Dr. Fauci in 1990 talking about the AIDS pandemic
Contemporary undervaluation of the humanities
Unfortunately, right now, as I have written about several times before (most recently in this article from November 2020), the humanities in general are being severely undervalued, both at the societal level and at the institutional level. Fewer students are applying for majors in the humanities because they incorrectly perceive humanities degrees as “useless” in the job market.
As universities become increasingly corporatized, they care more about which departments are attracting the most majors than about which departments are important for society. When corporatized university administrations see that humanities departments are attracting fewer majors than other departments, they often use this as an excuse to downsize them. Many universities are getting rid of their classics departments altogether, along with many of their other humanities departments.
For instance, just recently, on 3 December 2020, the University of Vermont announced a plan to completely eliminate twelve majors and eleven minors from their College of Arts and Sciences. This plan will involve eliminating all classical studies majors and minors, disbanding their college classics department, and firing most of their classics faculty—including potentially tenured faculty.
The University of Vermont has been facing budget shortfalls for several years now. Their goal is to save money by getting rid of as many humanities departments as they think they can afford to lose so that they won’t have to cut any funds from their STEM departments or business departments, since more students are currently majoring in those departments and the university wants to protect them from any kind of cuts at all costs.
The university, of course, had plenty of other options they could have picked. It’s well known that university administrators make ungodly sums of money—far more money than any professor—and the university could have chosen to cut money out at the administrative level rather than at the faculty level, but they could never bring themselves to do that. They could have also chosen to make smaller cuts across the board rather than slashing the College of Arts and Humanities, but they apparently couldn’t bear to do that either.
Many universities across the United States are playing exactly this same sort of administrative calculus. Whenever there’s any kind of budgetary problem, the arts and humanities always seem to get cut.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of Williams Hall at the University of Vermont
Conclusion
Dr. Fauci understands the importance of science and medicine far better than most people. He has emphasized time and time again the importance of ordinary people listening to scientific experts for information about COVID-19 and about what actions they should take to prevent the disease from spreading. Nevertheless, he recognizes that the humanities are extremely important too and, unlike some scientists, he even seems to recognize that people in the humanities actually know what we’re doing.
We need more people like Dr. Fauci who recognize that there is value and importance in both STEM and the humanities.
Be like Dr. Fauci; support the humanities.
As someone you counseled young college students on advancing to medical school, it was once commonplace for candidates for medical schools to major in the humanities. That is a time past, I am afraid. The advent of MedCAT and other tests and the “scientification” of medicine, more and more “pre-med” students are majoring in biochemistry and biology. The assumption in days past was that all of the science they would need was to be taught to them in med school. Now, those schools are requiring Organic Chemistry as a prerequisite to applying.
This is in the fact that studies show a positive correlation with success in the first two years of med school (the book learning part) with a high GPA is followed by a negative correlation for success in the final two years (the clinical part) for the same people.
Dr. Fauci used to have a quite ordinary educational preparation for med school and now we are going “Gee whiz!”
What an abjectly stupid post. Trump would be proud, though.
Agreed 👍
VoxFox:
“[Fauci] is part of the Jesuit Counter-Reformation against modernist”.
Apart from the stupidity of this statement… Your anti-catholicism is not unfair, plus i’m agnostic, so i don’t care… just, why this obsession with the Jesuits? Just why? At least this religious order has given us some of the most brilliant scientists of modern times (Athanasius Kirchner, Ruggero Boscovich, Giovanni Battista Riccioli, Francesco Lana de’ Terzi, Benito Vines, Angelo Secchi, Teilhard de Chardin, etc..).
“…fascist views…”
Wtf?
“Jesuit [!!!] Classic education promotes the aristocratic warrior values of Athens and Rome: both gangster societies that grew robbing other people.”
Oh my..
1) Every civilization grew up robbing other people. Without wars of conquest, there would be no political entities as we know them, no States; we’d still living in prehistory (and even primitive tribes make war each other..) Sad but true.
2) The study of history and humanities does not promote violence. It is really the first time i hear this bullshit. The study of humanities broaden your views of the human society. Through the study of how the world worked till yesterday, you can understand the contemporary society better. Literature and philosophy can also help you in your daily life. Science is very important, it gives you the tools to understand the laws of nature. But it can’t tell you what’s wrong and what’s right. Some will disagree with me, but we don’t have innate natural moral laws. For example, ancient Athens and Rome, and every other civilization on the planet, considered pederasty and ephebofilia normal, not immoral. Now the emperor Adrian, one of the five good emperors, would be considered a perv, a monster, and arrested for his ‘love story’ with Antinoo. It’s just an example. As Lizzy said in her comment “STEM need humanities as much humanities need STEM”. Blessed words. Only this way you can consider yourself an intellectually-grown adult.
3) If you loathe history because you think it promotes violence, why the hell you keep commenting in an history blog? Just to say garbage? Just asking..
Ahem. It is fine to read on your own but not in a silo. Thank you for letting us know that you have come to your own interpretations so that we will not bother to cross-verify your sources. It does not matter after all since scientific and community consensus (not the politicized kind of course) is not an authority in your view and there is nothing left to say or argue. So given that it is based on your own interpretations, you assume the entire responsibility if you are wrong.
As far as I am concerned, your reading of the history of the Romans and their predecessors, the Greeks, is just another post-modernist hatchet job which is simply a run-on essay without proper research and of course, citations. It has not been cross-examined for plausibility and method. But with post-modernists, even methods are social constructs and so is the scientific method and human reason as well. As far as they are concerned, cabbage can actually be the more elevated species because our human structural assessment is based on a prior bias of superiority…. Get my drift? No man is an island and lives.
Wow! I would have never expected one of the most renowned health experts to have majored in Classics. Even cooler for him to form a bridge between the two fields. You learn something new everyday!
That’s the point. “Classics” are about preserving the
values of violent men (warriors) that are still respected
today after millions killed in World Wars and nukes can
now kill billions.
History has useful lessons but not cheering for thugs.
There’s no question that studying ancient Greek and Roman history and literature involves reading about a lot of violence. It’s also true that some ancient Greek and Roman texts do glorify violence. Nonetheless, I don’t think it is accurate to say that classics is “about preserving the values of violent men.”
For one thing, various ancient writers and classicists throughout history have argued against violence. Some of the oldest arguments for pacifism can be found in ancient texts (cf. the Gospel of Matthew 5:38–48, Origenes’s Against Kelsos 8.73, etc.). Even many ancient authors who don’t explicitly argue that all violence is evil portray violence as undesirable. I don’t think anyone could read Euripides’s tragedies and think, “Gee, war sounds like a wonderful thing!”
Moreover, although classicists today study ancient Greek and Roman texts, I think very few regard “the values of violent men” as something that should be “preserved.” If you ask a classicist about someone like Alexander the so-called “Great,” it’s far more likely that they would tell you that he was a genocidal monster than it is that they would be to tell you that he was a supremely moral paragon who should be admired and emulated.
We read and promote the study of texts like “De Bello Gallico” not because we advocate for genocide, but because we can learn from them (not least of all because it’s accessible to the intermediate Latin learner). Would you say that middle school teachers who read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with their students are advocating for use of the n-word?
People, this is an article in support of the value of a humanistic education. Dr. Fauci is brought in merely to emphasize that having an education that includes the study of philosophy, history, and literature broadens one’s intellectual worldview. Steve Ruis bemoans the fact that this approach is underappreciated. And the author of the article is to be commended for alerting his audience to an alarming trend in American education. As for Kentigern, E. Harding, and Voxfox — your thinking is so hidebound that you completely miss the point; time for you to go back to school.
I agree 100% with this statement. This is TRUTH……
I pity these pseudo-intellectuals, they only speak what they have learned, not from a logical and critical thinking mindset, but from a brain washed, non-intelligent based “think for yourself” motive. When one does not desire to be rejected of men, they are willing to compromise any type of integrity, honor or truth.
They are to be pitied…..there end is death.
I have not in any way expressed support for eugenics; I have expressed support for vaccinations. Vaccinations are not in any way equivalent to eugenics. In fact, vaccinations are the exact opposite of eugenics. Eugenicists kill or sterilize people whom they consider unfit to reproduce; vaccinations, on the other hand, save the lives of millions of people worldwide. Indeed, vaccinating people who are healthy helps create herd immunity, which is the only thing that protects people who have weakened immune systems and who cannot safely undergo vaccination themselves. I would contend that those who oppose vaccination actually support a form of eugenics, because they are essentially saying that people with weakened immune systems don’t deserve to live.
Thank you.
This also reminds me that I want to read about Albert Schweitzer.
STEM needs the humanities as much as the humanities need STEM.
@voxfox
I add my last comment to this pointless thread just to make at least something clear.
-No one can come up with his own historical approach, or method, or interpretation (call it as you prefer). There is only one historical method that serious and honest professional historian, or amateurs or just history buffs that want to know what they are talking about, must follow. Some basilar rules:
-No one can be totally inpartial, but at least try to put aside your prejudices. Draw conclusions from the study of a certain topic, not the other way round (studying to confirm your own a priori thesis). It’s also an error in statistics. (Confirmation bias)
-Avoid the tendentious practice of cherry picking. Not long ago Spencer posted an excellent article on Plato and his alleged protofeminism. If you are tendentious and want to prove he really was a protofeminist, you’ll cherry pick from his works only passages that conform to this thesis. If you think he was a staunch male chauvinist, you’ll do the opposite. That’s not what you’re supposed to do if you’re an honest historian, no need to tell. History is more nuanced than the cartoonish fairy tale illiterate people have in mind (and that is exactly what makes it interesting)
-people are products of the epoch they live in. How many times have i seen people saying ‘oh, if a few philosopher like Voltaire, D’Alembert, d’Holbach, Hume, Kant, Beccaria (add some hundred more illuminist philosophers) weren’t born at all, we would be still living in the Middle Ages! (technically the Early Modern Period, so way worse than the Middle Ages). As if Enlightment happened by pure chance. A serious historian should try to explain why X happened, why there, why then, why not before etc..
-Perioditiation is conventional. People didn’t suddenly become more intelligent in the night between december 31rst 1400 and january the first, 1401 (the same in 1700-1701). It should be obvious, but it isn’t.
-No more Whiggish approach to history. We don’t live in XIX century.
-If your thesis is that the rediscovery of Lucretius, for example, made people more intelligent, atheist and confident in their ability to shape their own destiny without supernatural interferences, you must also explain why the Reinassance and Early Modern Period was the Golden Age of magic, astrology, divination, occultism, esoterism, cabbalism, witch hunts, wars of Religion after the Reformation etc. If your thesis is that religious struggles caused the fall of the Roman Empire, you must also explain why the more christianised East, indeed the place where 90% of heretic sects popped up, survived another millennium. Consider the counter evidence to a thesis.
-Remember that the crushing majority of world population has always lived in Asia. In 1750 ca. 1/3 of it lived in the Qing empire. I understand western-eurocentrism, but the idea that the only place in the world where economic, cultural, political, scientific and technological progress was possible was Europe, because the other people couldn’t evolve on their own, is a little… i mean, it implies that some teleological force wanted western white man to conquer and civilize the world.
These are some of the things that everyone who wants to approach history must remember.
About the fact that for 1000 years (1000! I truly hope you mean 100 ys and you added a zero accidentaly) Jesuit-dominated accademic history field hasn’t put in discussion the old orthodox conservative ideas… you’ve had your own experiences, so i dunno. New archaelogical discoveries put in discussion some things we were sure of until yesterday, for example.
Lastly history can’t give you a crystal sphere. If i were to make short term prediction, i think that in 2025 we’ll be still struggling with the economic consequences of the pandemic (the sanitary emergency will be over within the end of 2021), China will be more powerful than she is now (politically and economically). Maybe Hong Kong will be annexed and fully integrated in the Chinese system. I can’t predict anything else. Neither you can. If you’re like a dickian pre-cog, you should tell Biden, and he’ll appoint you Special Advisor for Future Affairs. Good luck.
Spencer, today is Christmas, it’s not worth spendying a single minute replying to idiotic comments like those of this conspirationist crackpot Cal and his pal, who don’t even know what ‘think with your own head’ means. ( Of course, if your source of information on the world is a conspirationist website, then you’re thinking with the head of the guy who writes bs on such site. By a reductio ad absurdum, if you say that Lake Baikal is the world’s deepest lake because you read it on a geography textbook, you’re an idiot because you’re trusting nameless geographers and you’re not doing the hard work to think with your own head: so intelligent people must go around the world and control personally the depth of every godforsaken lake. If he’s not an hypocrite then voxfox should be a critical thinker and start to consider that maybe he wasn’t born the day he thinks he was born: maybe his parents have been lying on his birthday for some reason, and the documents that testify he was born on xx/xx/xxxx are forgeries, maybe made by Jesuits- after all, we all know that Christians are wont to forge documents, like Lorenzo Valla proved with the Donation of Constantine… wait, why should we trust historians and believe Valla really existed?).
Spencer, put voxfox and Cal’s comments in the trashbin where they belong. You’re too intelligent to spend time with these and other people. I also appreciate that you are very kind to everyone because you’re a good-hearted lad; but sometimes you should be harsher with people who deserve a little thrashing, like Tim O’ Neill does in the land down under.
Looking forward to always interesting articles next year.
Buon Natale e buone feste (Merry Christmas and good holydays).
Excellent article. If you don’t mind, would you be able to post a list of Classics for the uninitiated? Introductory material, for those who aren’t blessed with knowledge of classical literature. Thanks!