by Darrin McMahon

Readers of TNR's Open University--and all those interested in the course of enlightenment--will want to consult, if they haven't done so already, the most open university of them all. MIT's OPENCOURSE initiative is a truly amazing site. Launched in 2001 with major funding from the Hewlett and Mellon Foundations, it has placed over 1,500 courses, from 34 departments, online, and continues to grow, providing completely open, accessible, and free education to anyone who cares to get it. This morning I watched National Medal of Science winner Robert A. Weinberg deliver the opening lecture to Introduction to Biology, and explain how, when he took the same course in 1961, roughly 80 percent of what is now taught there hadn't yet been discovered. Sitting in my office some 1,500 miles away, I felt a shiver of back-to-school excitement as I sifted through the entire list of course readings, the syllabus and calendar, problem sets and exams, along with answer keys and solutions. For some classes, you can even access lecture notes and papers turned in by MIT students. I don't think I'm up for Differential Equations or Non-Linear Programming, but there are plenty of other options. And because of partnering with consortiums in Latin America and China, many of the courses are available in Portuguese, Spanish, and Mandarin, along with a smattering of other languages, as well. To be sure, not all of the courses offer video lecture files, and presumably there are major copyright issues at stake here. I have to admit that while, as a consumer, I love the idea of watching somebody else hold forth, as a producer, I still feel a little uneasy about turning over my finely (or not so finely) crafted lectures to the scrutiny of the world. Apparently I'm not alone: Not one of the listed history courses at the MIT site, as far as I can work out, has audio or video files of lectures, though all provide syllabi, readings, and other materials. Since at least the eighteenth century, defenders of enlightenment have shared the dream of total transparency in the res-publica of letters, arguing that the benefits of shared knowledge across borders far outweighs the costs to individuals or nations who would keep learning and technological capacity to themselves. We might care to qualify that slightly in a nuclear age. But the general goal remains sound. And that MIT's robust promotion of it is good for America's image abroad is plainly attested by the positive feedback posted on the site. Here is one snippet from a self-described "self-learner" in Paris, Monsieur Leigh Pascoe. "The MIT OCW program is a generous and far-sighted initiative that will do more to change the world for the better than a thousand Iraq-style invasions. It does much to restore my faith in the enlightenment of the American people and their great experiment in democracy. This program should be emulated by every university worthy of the name." Thanks to MIT for living the enlightenment, while doing the sort of cultural diplomacy that the U.S. government has done so poorly of late.