Beginning in Fall 2025, Whitman College will offer students the opportunity to explore the intricate interplay of legal systems, cultural practices and humanistic thought through a new interdisciplinary minor: Law, Culture and the Humanities. This program, co-directed by Associate Professor and Chair of Politics Jack Jackson and Paul Pigott and William M. Allen Professor of Ethics and Philosophy and Chair of Philosophy Patrick Frierson, builds upon Whitman’s history of legal studies while providing students with a unique approach to law.
The Law, Culture and the Humanities minor will engage students in exploring law beyond traditional pre-professional frameworks. With courses spanning topics like constitutional law, gender and law, Indigenous politics, copyright law, and philosophies of punishment, students will discover how law shapes—and is shaped by—society and culture.
The study of law at Whitman goes back to the very early days of the college, so the program, though newly formalized, brings together the college’s academic legacy with an emphasis on innovations that expand educational opportunities.
“The long history of excellent teaching and scholarship by the faculty of Whitman in the field of law helped inspire the creation of this new minor,” says Jackson. “The process of establishing the new minor has already facilitated both new intellectual collaborations across departments at the college and the creation of new courses in the departments of Anthropology, Sociology, and Rhetoric, Writing and Public Discourse.”
The minor will also integrate Whitman’s vibrant intellectual life outside the classroom, requiring students to attend approved guest lectures and campus events, such as the annual lecture honoring the legacy of Whitman alum and Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.
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