by WorldTribune Staff, October 29, 2026 — Real World News
Applications for the the Humanities 10 course at Harvard have skyrocketed. In the current semester, 180 incoming freshmen competed for just 90 available spots.
Hum 10 as it is called on campus is notorious for being a brutal class that rejects digital shortcuts in favor of intense, old-school classical education.
Digital devices are strictly banned from the class. The class operates as a strict “anti-AI” deep-reading boot camp.
Co-led by faculty like David Elmer and Samantha Matherne, Hum 10 focuses on intensive human engagement with classic texts (from The Odyssey and Dante to James Baldwin).
Attendance is mandatory. Late arrivals are penalized with pink slips.
The course is a letter-grade-only class. It eliminates the easy fallback of a pass/fail option.
“The class is definitely not for padding the GPA,” Pamela Paul wrote in an Oct. 27 analysis for the Wall Street Journal. “Students read a hefty book a week and write regular essays.”
Elmer, a classics professor and one of Hum 10’s co-leads, told The Journal: “I did have the sense that a lot of students feel that the culture at large is not hospitable to deep reading, deep thinking or deep engagement with writing. Whether that’s because of AI encroaching on their autonomy as a writer or thinker, I honestly don’t know.”
Terms like “Western Civ,” “Great Books” and “the canon” appear nowhere in the course description for Hum 10.
The curriculum begins with “The Odyssey,” travels forward in time to James Joyce’s “Ulysses” and then backward to end with “The Iliad.” In between are assignments on Montaigne, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Baldwin, Dante, and Plato.
Each professor nominates two books to include among the year’s coursework. They all attend every lecture and must lead seminars on books they may not have previously read, and from other disciplines.
Samantha Matherne, a philosophy professor and part of the rotating faculty for Hum 10, said: “We tell students all the time that Hum 10 is a transformative experience. And not just for them.”
Students who aren’t in the class wondered why those who are didn’t “just Chat the books,” i.e., use AI.
“A lot of what we get out of this class is the human experience, and you can’t get that out of AI,” Peggy Urdan, a government and neuroscience major from Lexington, Massachusetts told The Journal. “The only way to get anything out of this class is to not use AI.”
250 Years of Freedom Is At Risk
Is pendulum swinging back at Harvard? Students flock to tough class reading classics added by Editor Two on
View all posts by Editor Two →