The annual meeting of the American Council of Learned Societies, a national group that represents scholarly associations in the Humanities, ended on Saturday in Washington, D.C. Many talks focused on the value of the humanities to American innovation and to democratic citizenship. David Marshall, dean of humanities and fine arts at the University of California […]
Advocacy Statements & Campaigns
Macquarie University’s Vice-Chancellor Steven Schwartz on the Humanities and a Meaningful Life
Steven Schwartz, the Vice-Chancellor of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, has published a review of several books on the state of the humanities in this month’s Australian Literary Review. The books Schwartz reviews emphasize the value of the humanities in a university culture increasingly dominated by the goal of making money: In Saving Higher Education […]
BiblioTech: Bringing Humanities Ph.D. Innovation to Silicon Valley
On May 11, 2011, executive officers and venture capitalists from Silicon Valley and humanities faculty and doctoral students from Stanford University will come together to discuss the ways in which humanities doctoral students can help Silicon Valley businesses and how these businesses can enlist humanities Ph.D.’s. Keynote speakers will include Vivek Ranadivé, Chairman and CEO […]
Modern Language Association Protests Federal Budget Cuts to Language and Humanities Programs
The MLA Executive Council has issued a statement criticizing the final Continuing Resolution for the 2011 federal budget in the United States, which includes dramatic cuts to International Education and Foreign Language programs, the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The MLA urges its members in the U.S. […]
n+1: Why Bother? Review of Humanities Manifestos
In the most recent issue of the literary magazine n+1, Nicolas Dames reviews three recent books on the value of the humanities, Terry Castle’s The Professor and Other Writings, Louis Menand’s The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University, and Martha Nussbaum’s Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. The review […]
4Humanities Initiative: Humanities, Plain & Simple
Directed by Christine Henseler, The Humanities, Plain & Simple is a special 4Humanities project. It is a comprehensive and targeted campaign that calls out to individuals and groups inside and outside of academia to write statements in “plain language” as to why the Humanities matter. How has Humanities-based thinking directly or indirectly altered or innovated […]
The Sciences vs. Humanities: A Power Struggle
In a recent blog for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Michael Brown emphasizes that we need to think about the humanities not just as those disciplines that “specialize in expression, appreciation of qualitative aspects of life, and the promotion and expression of ‘values,’” but also as disciplines that provide crucial knowledge about our social nature. […]