Lauren Higgins

What’ve you enjoyed most about your area of study? Was there a particular discovery, new skill or way of thinking, or insight that you found especially valuable? Please share an example from your favorite class or experience.

What I’ve enjoyed most about studying political science is understanding both the challenges and opportunities that come with political decision-making. There’s a lot of things wrong with the world right now, but I believe that law and public policy have the power to make meaningful change in the lives of individual people. It’s important to understand how this change is enacted—or, in many cases, how it is not.

I’ve also enjoyed the wide range of subfields within the major and the freedom students are given to pursue our own interests. Though we all learn the same theoretical frameworks underlying much of political science, it is left to us to apply it to the policy areas to which we’re drawn. In one of my classes, Political Science Scope and Methods (17.801), I was able to pursue my own research project on the topic of housing discrimination and antidiscrimination law, which I am continuing to study for my urban planning thesis.

How does the knowledge from this field, or your interest in it, combine with your other major or minor studies at MIT?

Urban planning is inherently political in nature. Political science has more of a focus on policies and institutions, but urban planning addresses the implementation of those policies and how people interact with the social and built environment on a day-to-day basis. Louis Brandeis said that states (and I would add cities!) are laboratories of democracy, and I agree. There’s so much potential for transformative change at the local level, and the chance to learn what justice looks like in practice.

An MIT education includes study in the scientific, technical, social science, arts, and humanities fields. How do you think that wide range of knowledge and perspectives will be valuable to you – for your career success and for your enjoyment of life?

MIT has given me the ability to work critically through problems, whether they are scientific or human in nature. Political science and urban planning are both interdisciplinary to their cores, and my coursework has consisted of a mix of law, statistics, economics, sociology, history, philosophy, and social psychology. Such a breadth of understanding has helped me think more profoundly about the social issues facing us today, and the steps we can take to start solving them.

Another deeply meaningful part of my education took place at the Suffolk County House of Correction, where I took a class called Authenticity (ES.92). In conversations with incarcerated individuals, it was perhaps the most authentic I’ve ever been, allowing me the opportunity to reflect on my own life experiences in relation to others with different, yet remarkably very similar, backgrounds.

At MIT, we’re all trying to tackle the world’s most difficult problems, but the value of our education lies in the people we encounter, the support we receive, and the community that forms around us. Social science is fundamentally about society, and people, and each other. How we care for one another is all that really matters.

What are your plans for the future?

I’m not sure yet!