MIT’s Compass to life
An exciting initiative from across SHASS explores the persistent moral and social questions central to the human experience: what is value, merit, truth, a good society?

A new class will introduce MIT students to how the humanities, arts, and social sciences enable us to grapple with the fundamental questions about moral and social life that affect us all: What do we value? What do we know? What do we owe each other?
The class, 21.01 Compass Course: Love, Death, and Taxes: How to Think – and Talk to Others – About Being Human, is a 12-unit, seminar-style CI-H and HASS-E that will be offered to MIT undergraduates for the spring 2025 semester.
“When we came up with the idea for Compass, we were interested in the frameworks and tools that help us make sense of how we choose what jobs we take, who we choose to be friends with, how we spend our time, and how these are connected to bigger questions about how we want the world to look and how we make decisions as a society, even when other people don’t share our values, opinions or experiences,” said professor Lily L. Tsai, one of the Compass Initiative’s lead faculty.
Designed by faculty from across MIT’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, with input from a 13-member Student Advisory Board, Compass is part of a multidisciplinary initiative that explores the persistent moral and social questions central to the human experience — what are value, merit, truth, justice, citizenship, and a good society.
“Just because these questions are complicated and these situations exist in gray areas rather than black and white, doesn’t mean we can’t examine them rigorously and make real progress in terms of understanding them as individuals and communities,” Tsai added. “The class is hopefully trying to provide a place where we can build the habit of reflecting on our values and assumptions and asking ourselves these questions periodically throughout our lives.”
The class will be taught in a “flipped classroom” format, with in-person contact hours spent on active group discussion, activities, and debates. There are no traditional lectures during in-person contact hours; instead, students will watch pre-recorded video lectures as homework preparation.
“One thing I love about Compass is that the diverse lessons provide a new lens through which to view the world and to build common ground with people from other disciplines when discussing big questions,” shared Leela Fredlund ‘24, who supports coordination of the Compass Initiative.
“For instance, I never considered myself good at music, so I never took a music class at MIT. Through professor Emily Richmond Pollock’s Compass lesson on genius, I learned how musicologists tackle questions, and it felt accessible because genius has also been an important (and controversial) concept in physics and political science, fields I’m more familiar with,” Fredlund added.
Some lessons will include a podcast in which MIT professors from science, engineering and the humanities and social sciences discuss big questions in the contexts of their fields and lives. For example, an episode hosted by Professor Sally Haslanger, along with MIT professors from Philosophy, Science, Technology and Society, History, and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science examines values, competing values and what happens when you face a hard choice. How do you decide when there’s no algorithm?
Through seminars, debates, and simulations, students will engage in how to think about what kinds of humans they want to be, what kind of society they want to help create, and how we live together when we have different values and beliefs. Students will also have the opportunity to attend field trips to a variety of local arts events and to connect these experiences to the core questions the class asks.
As part of the broader Compass initiative, there are plans to launch an MIT Compass Podcast that engages in these fundamental questions with guests from across the MIT schools of Science and Engineering. There are also plans to adapt the residential version of this class for online learners on MITx.
Learn more about the Compass Initiative.
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