Over the past decade, interdisciplinary programs such as gender studies,
global studies, and environmental studies have proliferated quickly across
the American academy. One study showed that the number of environmental
studies programs at four-year colleges and universities doubled between 1990
and 1995, and more are still being added. Political science departments
frequently find themselves at the center of these new programs, and courses
in environmental politics are often in high demand among students. The
complexity and persistence of environmental problems is finally forcing the
academy to recognize the importance of interdisciplinary research and
teaching. Consider the case of global warming. It is impossible to discuss
this issue intelligently from the perspective of any single discipline.
Political scientists might illuminate certain facets of the debate, such as
how national and international political structures create few incentives
for policymakers to aggressively address the issue. But however
important such insights might be, they are far too narrow to even begin
to encompass the complexity of the climate change issue, which requires
literacy in the discourses of other disciplines, including
environmental economics, atmospheric research, and environmental
ethics. After decades of suspicion in the academy about the
intellectual rigor of interdisciplinary approaches, the persistence of
complex environmental problems, and simply the rapidly growing cohort
of scholars engaged in environmental research and teaching, is driving
increasing acceptance of such approaches.Philip Brick received the APSA's Pi Sigma Alpha Award for
Outstanding Teaching in Political Science in 2000, and in 2004 he was named
Outstanding Environmental Educator by the Environmental Education Association
of Washington. His environmental field program is described at
www.whitman.edu/semester_west, and he can be contacted at
[email protected]. The author thanks Jennifer Hochschild at Perspectives
on Politics and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on
an earlier draft of this essay. He also thanks the research assistants at
Perspectives on Politics and Whitman College student Kalin Schmoldt
for gathering syllabi for this review.