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At a panel last Thursday night, Harvard professors were joined by the stars of HBO's cop drama The Wire in announcing the plan to introduce the milestone TV show as credited course next year at the Ivy League school, Harvard's paper The Crimson wrote.

A class on The Wire is not an all-new idea, as several other colleges will tell you, but they're usually writing/media classes. Harvard's The Wire course will be taught by William J. Wilson, a professor in sociology and African-American studies, who will use the series as a case study for poverty in America.

The goal of the meet was to discuss the show's potency in revealing the urban problems plaguing today's inner-city lives. During the sold-out panel, Wilson, a big fan of the show, gave it high praise:

The Wire has done more to enhance our understanding of the systemic urban inequality that constrains the lives of the poor than any published study.

I do believe he's poking fun at himself there, since Wilson has had several books about the subject published.

I'd love to take this class, but I'm not Harvard material, sadly. It's a good thing that I own this prized possession, so all I need now are a mirror (check), a white board (check), a distinguished beard (working on it) and a fake doctorate (writing one now); then I can teach myself.

Also worth mentioning—probably more so than a university course—is the efforts of Sonja Sohn, the actor who played detective Kima Greggs on the show, who has launched the "reWIRED for Change" organization in Baltimore. The nonprofit, consisting of many of the former cast and crew members of the show, uses The Wire as a teaching tool to help children in underprivileged communities, as a way to steer them off of a life of drugs and crime.

Check out the organization's website here. This is one of the rare instances of a show putting their money where their mouth is and actually doing something about what they preach on their show.