Assault on humanities weakens us as a people

Commentary

Over the last year or so, there has been much talk about a crisis in the humanities. One recent provocation of a flurry of discussion related to that crisis was the decision of State University of New York at Albany to eliminate programs in French, Italian, Russian, classics and theater.

Stanley Fish, distinguished literary theorist, dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago and currently Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and Law at Florida International University, bitterly wrote in a New York Times column responding to the decision: "The truth is no one in public life cares for the humanities as an academic enterprise, although public officials most likely do care for books, movies, operas and TV, and like to think of themselves as crackerbarrel philosophers and historians."

Responding to the same crisis, Cornell President David Skorton, in his fall "state of the university" address, announced plans to hire more than a hundred humanists over the next decade and called upon humanities scholars and administrators to begin aggressively making the case for support of the humanities.

Martha Nussbaum spoke as part of November's USF Phi Beta Kappa Faculty lecture series, and her book, "Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities," was the subject of a Humanities Institute public forum. She argues that our shortsighted emphasis on education devoted to developing profitable skills, with a corresponding reduced commitment to humanities and the arts, reduces our ability to think critically and creatively, question authority and sympathize with those who are different from us.

Weakening the humanities weakens us as a people and as wise citizens of a democratic republic. For many of us the only surprise in this is that it is perceived as news. The decline in support and understanding of the humanities - in the academies and in funding agencies, as well as among the public - is something that has been going on for decades, so why all of a sudden has it become the occasion for news and even calls to action? And yet, despite our surprise at the surprise, something has happened, and there is a difference.

Without a doubt, this is partly a result of accretion, reduction after reduction, slight after slight, building one on the other, with recent events simply being the proverbial straw that broke the back and brought about an emotional shift from demoralization to outright panic.

But also, I think, it's a result of a realization that the pervasive belief today is that desperate global economics and politics require maximal commitment to applied fields that will strengthen us - the United States - economically and technologically. Thus, humanities and the arts, nice as they are, are not directly and immediately connected to survival, and therefore, when cuts must come, that's where they will have to come from.

But this is not just a crisis in the humanities. The crisis is related to a broader spectrum of disciplines - the "Liberal Arts." In ancient times those disciplines were regarded as the ones appropriate for free people, and education was designed to help people learn to use their freedom wisely and well.

The sciences have always been partners with the humanities in delivering liberal education and creating knowledge that becomes part of what must be the continually evolving content of what a liberal education ought to be. Indeed, the idea of liberal education is one of a handful of ideas that has abiding relevance that, in spite of all the changes that have occurred over the past couple of millennia, ought not to be dismissed lightly - especially in a democracy, where broad, intelligent participation is a requirement for its survival.

Thus, it is not just the humanists who have been hurt; it is scientists as well - at least those scientists driven more by curiosity and wonder than by the need to produce tangible, short-term applications.

True, "pure" science usually produces practical results eventually - as do the humanities. One does not become a good citizen, a wise voter, an intelligent consumer or a happy person by creating technologies or even by discovering ways to live longer, nice as those things are. One does so by learning to think critically, by having a knowledge of history, by learning to imagine the experience of the other - and by engaging in self-interrogation in order to make the wisest possible best guess regarding what, in the long run, is going to make one satisfied with oneself and one's life.