Discussions Around the Humanities and Social Sciences
Opportunity Knocks for Liberal Education
December 17, 2020, Inside Higher Ed
The work we do now sits squarely in the middle of what so ails our nation and what is required to fix it, writes Matthew C. Moen.
Can Educating Women in the Liberal Arts Lift Asia's Communities Out of Poverty?
Oct. 11, 2019, Chronicle of Higher Education
The American University for Women in Chittagong, Bangladesh was founded by Kamal Ahmad in the belief that educating women will be the single most direct way to grow community incomes and make progress in educational reforms. But rather than focusing on vocational or professional training, Ahmad offers a classic liberal arts curriculum, arguing that an education grounded in critical thinking and inquiry will help “women take charge of their lives, with their mind their instrument of power.” Supported by international donors, the AUW educates girls from impoverished neighborhoods in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan and currently enrolls 800 girls eager to embrace an American model of a higher education in the liberal arts.
The Need for a Recovery of the Humanities
May 14, 2019, Inside Higher Ed
“To paraphrase Dewey: we can recover the humanities if we cease trying to refine them as insular tools for academics and cultivate them instead as a frame of mind for dealing with the problems of today’s world.”
The Cognitive Outcomes of Liberal Education
January, 2019, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
“In view of the range of possibilities and the complexities in designing such studies, organizations and researchers seeking to make further progress in understanding the impact of liberal education practices on cognitive growth should proceed deliberately.”
The Outcomes of a Liberal Arts Education: State of Research
The Mellon Research Foundation
“Recent decades have seen a growing emphasis on a set of capacities and dispositions complementary to the cognitive capacities...that are important in education and in life. This cluster of qualities, which include interpersonal capacities like the ability to work well with others and intrapersonal qualities like perseverance and self-control are often grouped together.”
Cuts Reversed at Stevens Point
April 11, 2019, Inside Higher Ed
“The curricular innovations are based on a strong focus on maintaining and enhancing instructional quality,” and many of the new and modified degree programs are “likely to be more interdisciplinary, which follows trends in research practices.” (Update to New York Times story, “Students in Rural America Ask, ‘What Is a University without a History
Major?’” below.)
A Future for the Humanities
April 2, 2019, Inside Higher Education
What attracts students to these works, and the teachers who render them present? The answer may be simpler and more profound than the professoriate will acknowledge: human experiences matter more than objects, and encounters with the most searing elements of our humanity are the most fundamental experiences of all.
Are the Humanities History?
April 2, 2019, The New York Review of Books
“Defenders of the humanities generally emphasize what the field can do for the individual: they promote self-discovery, breed good citizens, and teach critical thinking.”
The Humanities at Community Colleges
March 11, 2019, Inside Higher Education
“Much of the public discussion about the humanities focuses on four-year colleges and universities. But humanities instruction is extensive at community colleges as well. In an effort to draw attention to the extent of the humanities at two-year colleges, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences conducted a national survey of community colleges and is today releasing the findings as part of the Humanities Indicators project.”
The Decline of Historical Thinking
February 4, 2019, The New Yorker
“Yes, we have a responsibility to train for the world of employment, but are we educating for life, and without historical knowledge you are not ready for life,”
Students in Rural America Ask, ‘What Is a University without a History Major?’
January 12, 2019, New York Times
“In the coming months….the University of Wisconsin [will be] making hard decisions and ‘doing fewer things better.’ The proposal [is] especially bitter for liberal arts professors, who have viewed their disciplines as the backbone of the college experience…. ‘If you want a career-focused program, I think then you could look at a community college or tech school,’ said Madeline Abbatacola, a senior studying history and wildlife ecology. Universities like hers, she added, ‘have a different lane.’”
Lies About the Humanities—and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
December 7, 2018, Chronicle of Higher Education
“If you participate long enough in public discussions about the role of the humanities both within higher education and in broader civil society, it becomes apparent that quite a lot of people have opinions about what scholarship and teaching in humanistic fields entail, but few demonstrate even rudimentary knowledge of either…. If you think the stakes of correcting the misrepresentation of humanistic work are simply about preening academics or ivory-tower musing, think instead about the students interested in literature, history, philosophy, and language. When you malign and misrepresent what scholars do, you’re punishing students.”
Making the Case for Liberal Arts
May 17, 2018, U.S. News & World Report
“It’s no surprise that much of the conversation at gatherings of university officials these days is about how to prove the value of the liberal arts….What is surprising is that, five decades into a crisis that now has become existential, the to-do list in a session at the annual meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities earlier this year, about turning this around, began with a remarkably basic question: ‘Define “liberal arts.”’”
