The PPE Program at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem opened in the 1999/2000 academic year. At the time, except for the long-standing, prestigious program in Oxford, only a handful of similar programs existed around the world. Although the Oxford PPE was an inspiration, here, at the Hebrew University, we tried, as in the more recent programs, to offer an integrative program that is more than just the joining of three fields.
The program was established on the initiative and with the backing of Menahem Ben Sasson, the University Rector at the time, and Jacob Metzer, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences. It was consolidated by a team, the members of which included Avner de Shalit, Nathan Zussman and Danny Attas, who was appointed as head of the program upon its establishment.
The first classes consisted of 30 students each. Since that time, the demand has increased, the classes have grown, and the admission requirements have soared. However, the sense of group belonging, team spirit and intellectually inspiring setting have not been lost – without the sense of being swallowed in an anonymous crowd, which may be one of the characteristics of larger programs of study. Today, 80-90 students are admitted each year and the admission requirements are some of the highest in the University. The program consists of six permanent academic staff members and teaching assistants.a
The main part of the studies at the Program are courses from the three participating departments. In each of these fields, the discipline core is studied in addition to advanced elective courses. Besides this, a number of courses are offered that are unique to PPE, intended to provide the integrative point of view. Among these we can mention the 1st year flagship course, Integrative Introduction: State, Market, Morality, which presents points of encounter between the science of economics and the science of politics, discusses philosophical issues and common methodologies, and opens a window to main writings in these fields.
Among the various unique courses studied in the 2nd and 3rd years are Game Theory for PPE, Economic History, Philosophy of Social Sciences, as well as elective courses, such as Philosophy of the Welfare State and Economic Thought Theory. Among these courses, we should mention the Fundamentals of Political Economy, which lays a theoretical and conceptual foundation for analyzing processes and phenomena in the political economy of democratic, industrialized economies; including: the capital market, welfare policy, inequality, privatization and regulation, and economic crises.
In their third year of studies, PPE students get a unique opportunity to write a seminar paper of their own choice in their field of interest, with the personal guidance of a University staff member. The climax of the program studies is the Individual Papers Presentation Workshop – an intensive, experiential workshop that takes place for three days at the end of the academic year, during which the students present their work and use the comments of their peers and the program’s staff to help them continue to write their papers.