To understand our commitment to an inter-disciplinary approach, we need to begin by recognizing the implications of the emergence, at the end of the 20th century of what we call a "global media society ©."

In this new society, the global in scope resulting from both the end of the Cold War and the extraordinary proliferation and intensification of communication technologies, disciplinary boundaries are both irrelevant and helpless in the face of the ceaselessly pounding surf of word and image we call the “symbolic tsunami©”, roaring on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In the face of this ever-strengthening "symbolic tsunami," the Minerva School believes no single discipline is capable of analyzing with minimal accuracy – let alone profound depth – an increasingly "globalized" world.

The Minerva School PhD in Critical Thinking combines the most powerful theoretical insights of six key disciplines: political economy, history, structural anthropology, verstehende sociology, psychoanalysis, and the philosophy of communication.

Without a keen awareness of, and familiarity with, the insights of ALL these disciplines, it is essentially impossible to begin to understand even the most elementary aspects of a “globalized” world – let alone the kinds of complexity thrown in by the current financial and economic crisis.

We believe the most powerful way to help people make sense of this world is through a profound commitment to a fundamental educational approach that takes the best insights of all the relevant disciplines and integrates them into a coherent and meaningful – yet simultaneously open-ended - whole.

David Caploe holds an Honors AB [ Social Theory ] from Harvard University, and an MA in Political Science [ International Relations / Comparative Politics / Soviet Politics ] and a PhD in International Political Economy from Princeton University, where his dissertation was entitled "The Political Economy of US / Europe / Japan Relations Since 1945."

David has taught at several universities in the US, including Duke, Fordham, North Carolina State and the University of Miami. He was Professor of Humanities and Social Science at Strayer University and Mirus University, two leading adult / distance learning institutions headquartered in the Washington DC area. David also was the Founder and Director of the MA program in Media Studies at New College of California in San Francisco.

David’s articles on the current global financial and economic crisis have appeared in the New York Times Magazine / the Daily Yomiuri Shimbun of Tokyo / and the Straits Times of Singapore. He has spoken before audiences including the Asia Business Forum, the Board of Trustees of the Gleeson Library at the University of San Francisco, the Malay Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Singapore, and numerous others in a speaking tour sponsored by the Princeton Club of Northern California / the Harvard Club of San Francisco / San Francisco State University / and the University of San Francisco Program in Peace and Justice Studies.