Harvard drops religion course requirement

BOSTON, Dec 14 (Reuters) Harvard University has dropped a controversial proposal that would have required all undergraduates to study religion as part of the biggest overhaul of its curriculum in three decades, the university said.

Efforts to revamp Harvard's curriculum, which has been criticized for focusing too narrowly on academic topics instead of real-life issues, have been in the works for three years.

A proposal for a ''reason and faith'' course requirement, which would have set Harvard apart from many other secular universities and made it unique among its peers in the elite Ivy League, was made public in a preliminary report in October.

''We have removed 'reason and faith' as a distinct category,'' a faculty task force said in a revised report, excepts of which were obtained by Reuters.

''Courses dealing with religion -- both those examining normative reasoning in a religious context and those engaging in a descriptive examination of the roles that religion plays today and has historically played -- can be readily accommodated in other categories,'' it said.

The eight-member task force released the report to faculty last week.

It has proposed a new course requirement on ''what it means to be a human being,'' which is expected to broadly cover a number of areas in the humanities.

The university's curriculum shake-up, the first major overhaul since the university formulated its current ''core'' course requirements in the 1970s, had been advanced by former Harvard President Lawrence Summers, who resigned his post in June after a faculty revolt over unrelated issues.

He had proposed building up the sciences and giving students greater international exposure.

But faculty rejected a curriculum plan put forth in January.

October's proposal to add an emphasis on religion, produced by a new faculty committee that began work this year, was criticized for putting too much emphasis on what some professors viewed as one of several key areas of study.

Course requirements at America's eight Ivy League schools vary widely, but if Harvard's proposal for a ''faith and reason'' requirement had been accepted it would have been the only one where a course in religion was required.

It would have also marked a nod to Harvard's roots as a school founded to train Puritan ministers 370 years ago.

REUTERS DKS PM0501