Like the “Great Books-adjacent” programs I discuss in "History of Great Books in Higher Education," Mercer should implement a Great Books Program that includes texts from across the world. As outlined in "Great Books at Mercer," a global Great Books Program necessary to fulfil the program’s stated goals. Furthermore, it is also necessary to ensure the program’s survival and justify its existence in a time when people are advocating the need for anti-racism at every level of society. 

Based on the Great Books-adjacent programs at prestigious universities such as Columbia and the University of Chicago, I have compiled the following suggested reading list for Mercer’s “Global Great Books Program.” This is not intended to be an exhaustive list, but instead a place for conversations about the future of Mercer’s Great Books Program to begin. If we are no longer tied to outdated and problematic ideas about “Western Civilization," what might the program look like? 

To answer this question, just as the original Great Books committees had to compromise about what to include on their lists, I too had to compromise. It's already hard enough to decide what the most important texts of "Western Civilization" are, and it becomes even more difficult to decide what to include in a Global Great Books Program. First, I knew I wanted to restructure the program to actually be chronological. The current Great Books list prioritizes following the arc of Christianity over following a linear timeline. For example, GBK 203 includes the Hebrew Bible, a text written between 1200 and 165 BCE, with the Christian Bible, which was written around the start of the Common Era, and Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica, written around 1265 CE. As this strange collection of texts spanning two and a half centuries highlights, the current Great Books list is not as interested in chronology as it claims to be. It is more interested in the history of the Christian church than in the history of the "West."

 For this reason, my own suggested list is organized chronologically. I made an honest attempt to include texts from around the world that fulfil the criteria of the Great Books Program, but of course it is inherently impossible to fit every Great Book into a seven-course program, even if this definition is only applied to European books. If a book was left off this list, it is not because I believe it is unimportant or don't consider it a Great Book, but simply because there are only so many books that can be included. Likewise, if a text was included on this list, it is not simply to meet a diversity quota, but instead because I genuinely believe it fulfils the requirements of a "Great Book" as defined by the program's founders and Mercer.

To Great Books purists, the idea of a Global Great Books Program probably sounds scandalous. Great Books prides itself on tracing the development of “Western civilization.” However, I invite anyone opposed to widening the canon to reflect on their true motivations for defending the purity of this canon. While many argue that students should focus on “Western Civilization,” I would argue that the concept of “Western Civilization” itself is nothing more than a racist invention. 

It is true that the program currently includes non-European voices, such as the peoples from Southwest Asia who wrote the Hebrew and Christian Bibles and Saint Augustine, who was an African from modern-day Algeria. Likewise, it is equally correct that our idea of race has little basis in biology and is instead a social construct that has changed dramatically in time over the centuries. However, at the same time, it is also true that the Great Books Programs consists almost entirely of authors who our modern culture constructs as white. For example, though the characters in the Bible are from Southwest Asia, students may not acknowledge this fact when they study the text in their Great Books classes because Biblical characters are often depicted as white in American Christianity. 

Furthermore, the inclusion of Augustine and the Hebrew and Christian Bibles illustrates the fundamental hypocrisy of “Western Civilization” as constructed by the Great Books curriculum. The inclusion of these texts combined with the exclusion of the Koran and any texts written by Africans who did not practice Christianity highlights the fact that Mercer’s Great Books Program is just as focused on the “Judeao-Christian tradition” as it was when it first began in 1983. 

In other words, the diverse authors who are included on the curriculum send a very clear message: non-European people can only be considered part of Western Civilization if they are Christian. This message further supports my claim outlined in the section above the proposed new curriculum: Mercer's Great Books Program has never actually focused on "Western civilization," despite what it claims. From its creation in 1983 to its current form in 2021, the program has always centered on the history of Christianity. Though the program no longer markets itself as such, it is a relic of the university's history as a Baptist institution. 

Some might argue that the distinction between "Western Civilization" and Christianity is unimportant as these two concepts are inextricably linked. After all, we live in a country founded by Christian men of European descent. Why shouldn't we study the texts that influenced them?

I would highly encourage anyone who feels this way to read Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark, a text that had an enormous impact on this project. As Morrison highlights, despite claims to the contrary, arguing for the purity of the Great Books Program is not an apolitical stance. Instead, it is a highly political argument that female and non-European authors have not made significant enough contributions to intellectual development to be included alongside canonized authors like Plato. If the "Western canon" is truly apolitical, why does it include so many texts justifying slavery and none from the Africans these authors were enslaving? Have the descendants of enslaved Africans brought to the United States not had just as much of an impact on our modern country as the "enlightened" men who owned them?

Mercer’s Great Books Program is fundamentally flawed at its core. While the educational philosophy of the program is a wonderful idea, it fails to achieve its fundamental goals by excluding non-European and female voices. For this reason, slowly folding in new perspectives is not sufficient to fix the program. Currently, Great Books faculty are collaborating on curricular committees for each course in the program. These committees are compiling lists of texts that may be useful additions to the course. 

Professors serving on these committees have been instructed to include female and non-white voices when possible, but only when these texts fit in with the texts already on the list. These professors will then incorporate these texts into their classes using the established 80/20 rule of Mercer’s Great Books Program: the reading list must consist of at least 80% texts on the official reading list, but professors have up to 20% of the reading list at their discretion. Next year, after incorporating up to 20% of the new texts, professors will then meet with their committees again and decide which of these new books should be added to the official Great Books reading list.  

While this slow increase in diversity is a step in the right direction, it is not sufficient to fix the fundamental flaws of Mercer’s Great Books Program. First, allowing Great Books professors to have complete control over the programmatic changes does not fix the program’s lack of diverse voices. Mercer’s Great Books professors, like the authors they teach, are overwhelmingly white. The program cannot address its lack of diversity by only consulting white voices. Instead, the curricular change should be informed by experts such as individuals in the Africana and Women and Gender Studies departments. 

Second, to truly address the lack of diversity, diverse authors should not be forced to conform to the narrative of the pre-existing Great Books Program. In other words, the program should not address its lack of diversity by only including authors that fit into its specific linear arc of history. To achieve this neat, false narrative, the program has had to ignore large parts of history that do not fit. For example, students read the works of Plato, but not the works of the Arab and Byzantine scholars who helped preserve these works when they were unknown to Western Europe. Furthermore, they read the works of English philosophers such as John Locke and the American Founding Fathers he influenced such as Thomas Jefferson while ignoring the voices of the contemporary enslaved Africans who had just as much of an influence on our modern world. 

The Great Books Program’s lack of diversity is more than negligence: it is actively doing its students a disservice by not showing them the complete picture of history. By focusing on such a small area of the world and excluding all other global voices that equally influenced our modern country, the Great Books Program is failing its students. 

I therefore propose that the Great Books Program needs a complete overhaul. It is not enough to slowly incorporate diverse voices that fit the existing narrative of the program. Instead, the Great Books Program must fundamentally change its focus from the false narrative of “Western Civilization” to a global view. I have no issue with the existing criteria of evaluating what a “Great Book” is, I simply think there are far more “Great Books” in the world than the program acknowledges. 

In 2020, when individuals are calling for anti-racism at all levels of society, it is no longer sufficient for Mercer to offer a general education program that focuses so heavily on European intellectual development. It is time for Mercer to acknowledge the contributions diverse voices across the world have made to our cultural tradition.  

To truly address the lack of diversity, I believe the Great Books Program should create working groups that includes the voices of current Great Books students and professors, but also invites perspectives of individuals. For example, students and professors in the History, Africana, Spanish, and Women and Gender Studies departments would be extremely helpful voices to have. Individuals from Mercer’s newly formed Office of Diversity and Inclusion would also be a valuable addition to the conversation. 

I further propose that Great Books faculty should be engaged in training and an ongoing conversation about ways to incorporate diverse voices into their classrooms so that this initiative continues to grow with the program. I also suggest that for accountability, the programmatic changes should be openly available to all students. This could be a task to assign to the newly created Great Books Student Advisory Board.

As the Great Books Program prides itself on being student-led, students should be able to see how the program is changing over time. I believe student voices are invaluable to this process because they are truly the focus of and energy behind the Great Books Program. As my survey results highlight, Great Books students are no longer satisfied with the program.

While completely redesigning the program would unfortunately mean that many texts currently on the list would have to be replaced with new texts, I believe the benefits of a diverse curriculum with a global perspective would far outweigh the negative effects of having to take long-established books off the reading list. There are already many Western “Great Books” that are not included on the list because there is simply not enough space in the program. 

In other words, the texts on the list already have a value judgement attached. By being included on the list, whoever decided to include them had to evaluate them in comparison with other “Great Books” and decided which was more useful to include. Therefore, the fact that a global Great Books Program would require many current Great Books to be taken off the list is nothing new; there are already many texts being excluded from the list. As the original Columbia committee highlighted, any list “is always a compromise.” 

Just as the current list is a compromise between all the "Western" Great Books that could be included, a global Great Books Program would also be a compromise. But it would be a compromise based on a different set of values: diversity of thought and experience instead of depth in one specific culture. If Mercer does not reevaluate its priorities and redesign the Great Books Program, I believe the program will die. Based on the results of my survey, as Mercer becomes more diverse, I think that students who want a true liberal arts education in the great ideas of the world will eventually reject the Great Books Program. If the Great Books Program does not join the modern, globalized world, it will become just as much of a relic as the texts it studies. 

Being a Great Books student and preceptor has been one of my favorite parts of my Mercer experience. I believe the program needs to change not because I hate it, but because I love it, and I want everyone to be able to have the opportunity I did to experience the many benefits of the program. I am not advocating for doing away with the canon, but instead opening it up to all the diverse voices it has been excluding since its inception. It is my sincere hope that Mercer’s Great Books Program will last for generations of Mercer students to enjoy, but I also believe it will only continue into the future if the curriculum is broadened to welcome diverse voices.