The many merits of the humanities
The pre-eminent Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York has admitted as many as 25 percent of its medical students with humanities and social science undergraduate majors for 20 years because the traditional premedical curriculum tends to narrow students’ creative and independent thinking and perhaps their humanity.
A 2010 report found equivalent academic achievement between the humanities and premedical majors. However, humanities majors preferred primary care and psychiatry specialization and engaged more in research.
Primary care and research will serve North Carolinians and create commercial success. Mount Sinai is committed to accepting humanities students because they broaden the student body and may engage in more productive doctor-patient relationships.
Gov. Pat McCrory’s vision is a North Carolina narrowed to pursuits that he judges to be commercial.
His name-calling and use of the personal pronoun for the university system student body (“McCrory raises faculty’s ire,” Jan. 30) portend a divisive and reductive four years for North Carolina.
Our respected state university system is the pride of all North Carolinians, including those who studied at private schools.
We have only to look north to the University of Virginia to be wary of McCrory’s recent detonation.
Anne Micheaux Akwari, M.D.
Durham
