Reading the Harvard Red Book: reflections on the roles of the university and the social sciences in contemporary Malaysia

The authors revisit General Education in a Free Society: Report of the Harvard Committee, also known as the Harvard Red Book, an important book produced during World War II. The book considered the role of the university at a time when popular access to higher education was undergoing massive expansion. In view of parallel trends in Southeast Asia, and in particularly Malaysia, this paper draws out some of the insights from the Harvard Red Book which are relevant to contemporary higher education contexts. Of particular interest to this article is the role of the social sciences, whose value is often underappreciated. It is argued that the social sciences have an important social function in educating individuals not as potential social scientists, but more generally, as citizens who are able to participate competently in the public sphere.