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This week, in a central Seattle classroom, several dozen students and teachers are reviving an academic subject that's been scorned, vilified, and banned from universities for the past four hundred years or so. Kepler College of Astrological Arts and Sciences is now in session.
Kepler claims to be the first institution of higher learning in North America authorized to offer degrees in astrology—an authorization it received from the Washington state Higher Education Coordinating Board last year. The school is mostly a "distance learning" program, in which students read on their own and consult instructors by e-mail. But three times a year, the students and faculty gather in Seattle for a weeklong symposium. This week, the school's inaugural class is back in town for the first symposium of their sophomore term, and a dozen new students have arrived as freshmen.
Scientists, religious leaders, and academics have long reserved a special hostility for astrology, and, not surprisingly, this school has generated controversy. Last May, the chancellor of Boston University, John Silber, published an editorial column in a Boston newspaper headlined "Silliness Under Seattle Stars," in which he declared: "It is inexcusable for the government [to authorize] the granting of degrees in nonsense." Silber, a well-known conservative figure in the academic world, compared the certification of Kepler to the hanging of witches in Massachusetts; both, he said, legitimized superstition. "It is hard to think how a state agency might use its authority in a way more foolish and degrading to real education," he wrote.
After Silber's column received local publicity, Kepler came to the attention of state Representative Phyllis Gutierrez Kenney of Seattle, who co-chairs the state Legislature's committee on higher education. Kenney says she plans to conduct "an informal review" of the state's academic criteria sometime before the next legislative session. "The integrity of our higher education programs needs to be protected," she says.
However, visits to Kepler's classroom suggest that, in a world of grade-inflated, sports-obsessed, beer-chugging student bodies, Kepler is perhaps the last place where regulators should worry about the integrity of the higher education system. Whatever the value of studying astrology—and many "legitimate" scholars believe there is some [see "Battle of the Stars"]—the atmosphere at Kepler is about as studious and purposeful as that of any college classroom you're likely to find.
"Kepler is a lot tougher than I had imagined it would be," says 27-year-old student Mark Kuenzel, who works full-time as a digital media producer in Washington, D.C., and does his Kepler work at night. Kuenzel says he spent three years studying music and communications at a state school in Maryland, and "it wasn't this hard. We didn't get held to this high a standard." Because of the subject matter, he says, Kepler "wants to go beyond what other people would expect."
KEPLER IS easy to laugh at, and laughter is likely most people's initial response. Nothing but "What's your sign, dude?" for four long years? But the Kepler curriculum isn't just about reading horoscopes. Astrology was such a pervasive part of human science and culture for so many centuries that the coursework touches on medicine, mathematics, art, psychology, politics, and other fields of knowledge. Most of the first year is devoted to examining the development of astrology across different times and civilizations. "It's the history that's never taught," says Enid Newberg, Kepler's president. "Astrology's been selectively edited out."
Kepler itself has been a decade in the making. Newberg says astrologers have long dreamt of a return to the academic community. "From the Babylonian period to about the 17th century, astrologers were high scholars," she notes. (Of course, during the same period, blood-letters were also medical experts.) But not much happened until the proprietor of the Astrology Et. Al. bookstore on 45th in Wallingford and a group of local volunteers got together and set Kepler in motion. They incorporated as a nonprofit, and began raising money and devising a curriculum. The objective was "to develop astrology as a serious, respected course of study," says Newberg. Kepler raised start-up funds from a circle of prominent astrology practitioners, as well as a pair of former Microsoft executives, Cerise and William Vablais. (Neither could be reached for comment.)
With no campus home of its own, the college opted for distance learning. Organizers prescribed a symposium each trimester so that students and faculty could spend time living and studying together. "We didn't want to lose that camaraderie" of a residential college, Newberg says. The symposium has been a traveling show: Last winter, Kepler students met at the Bastyr University campus on the Eastside; in the spring they were at the Doubletree Inn next to Southcenter; this week they're renting space at Seattle University. Kepler officials hope that, someday, someone will donate them a building, at least for a library.
Classroom life during a Kepler symposium couldn't be more ordinary—except that everyone present seems a little more engaged than the usual indifferent undergrads slumped under baseball caps and overworked TAs. Kepler's inaugural-year students, most of whom are older than typical college age, see themselves as genuine pioneers, here to restore astrology to its rightful standing. "Astrology's been the bastard child of Western intellectual history," says Liz Kitney, 26, who is also studying history at Portland State University. "This is the first intellectual interest I've really been completely passionate about."
