Knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of diverse cultures are essential parts of a liberal education. Awareness of the contrasts and similarities between other cultures and traditional Western culture enables students to develop a greater understanding of both. Literature and the other arts provide examples of ways individuals find pattern and meaning in their experience. Study of these art forms gives students expertise and sophistication not only in recognizing the methods by which pattern and meaning are found, but also in critiquing those methods. Through literature and the arts, students engage their own and other cultures, examine their values, and discover sources of lifelong pleasure.
Human beings are inevitably social, influencing and being influenced by social groups.
The social sciences study social institutions and processes and deal with the human behaviors and values that form and change them, and are essential for an understanding of contemporary society. The unequal distribution of social, economic, and political power in the United States and in other countries is sustained through a variety of individual beliefs and institutional practices. These beliefs and practices have tended to obscure the origins and operations of social discrimination such that this unequal power distribution is often viewed as the natural order. The DPD requirement engages students in the intellectual examination of the complexity of the structures, systems, and ideologies that sustain discrimination and the unequal distribution of power and resources in society. Such examination will enhance meaningful democratic participation in our diverse university community and our increasingly multicultural U.S. society.