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The Ivy Exile's avatar

I agree with your eloquent case for more relevant and muscular humanities, but would suggest that maybe university leadership isn't stepping up to defend the non-STEM side of things because so much of the present faddish state of it has become indefensible...? A lot of programs really are rotted out with little or nothing left to offer, regardless of whatever reassuring rhetoric a talented fundraiser might be able to muster. In my experience non-quantitative academia has already done more to devastate itself than Trump-Vance could even contemplate. The way forward is probably less a food fight with the executive branch than getting back to rich meaningful timeless work that's relevant beyond a few hundred cosseted specialists who won't read each other's journal articles, either.

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Meagan O'Rourke's avatar

Quoting David Brooks quoting Princeton President John Hibben's 1913 address to students here..."You, enlightened, self-sufficient, self-governed, endowed with gifts above your fellows, the world expects you to produce as well as to consume, to add to and not to subtract from its store of good, to build up and not tear down, to ennoble and not degrade. It commands you to take your place and to fight your fight in the name of honor and of chivalry, against the powers of organized evil and of commercialized vice, against the poverty, disease, and death which follow fast in the wake of sin and ignorance, against all the innumerable forces which are working to destroy the image of God in man, and unleash the passions of the beast. There comes to you from many quarters, from many voices, the call of your kind. It is the human cry of spirits in bondage, of souls in despair, of lives debased and doomed. It is the call of man to his brother ... such is your vocation; follow the voice that calls you in the name of God and of man. The time is short, the opportunity is great; therefore, crowd the hours with the best that is in you."

(From this article: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/04/the-organization-kid/302164/)

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Can you imagine a university president delivering a speech like that today?

Universities are meant to shape whole people, to enrich their lives and ways of thinking about the world, and to help them become better citizens (and not just in the fake get a Fulbright to be a do gooder featured on the school website then go to work at McKinsey way). If universities refuse to teach the humanities in a rigorous and meaningful way, the whole project of the university is largely pointless.

I am somewhat optimistic that we may be reaching a tipping point in the humanities crisis. Getting a computer science or STEM degree is no longer a sure way to secure a job because of AI, and I think there is a hunger for people with a command of the humanities. Serious humanities thinkers are like the last keepers of ancient scrolls, preserving a dying language and religion. And maybe people will want a revival.

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