The Department of Classics and General Humanities offers major and minor programs that aim to examine in non-prescriptive fashion the culture, ideas and values of earlier civilizations with a view to promoting an understanding of the recurrent patterns but also enormous diversity of human culture, as well as an appreciation of the ways in which the past forms a basis for, and continuity with, the present.

These investigations aim to prepare students to become engaged citizens capable of bringing a historical and critical perspective to bear on questions (such as those pertaining to race, gender, class etc.) that beset modern societies as much as they did those of the past. Students acquire obsolescence-proof cognitive skills transferable to a wide spectrum of careers in current and evolving national and global economies, being provided not simply with “training” but with an education that overrides socio-economic disadvantages and equips them for top-flight positions.