Advocacy Statements & Campaigns

Advocacy statements, examples of the importance of the humanities, and news about the past, present, and future of the humanities: 4Humanities provides a platform for endorsing the importance of research, teaching, innovation, and creative renewal in the history, language, literature, philosophy, the study of cultures, and other areas that help society focus on human values and needs.

See also the other materials gathered in our “Voices For the Humanities” section.

Michael Bérubé’s “The Humanities, Unraveled”: The Ongoing Crisis in Humanities Graduate Education

Michael Bérubé’s moving piece “The Humanities, Unraveled,” published today in The Chronicle of Higher Education, considers the state of graduate education in the humanities. Bérubé describes this state as “a seamless garment of crisis” that makes it “exceptionally difficult to discuss any one aspect of graduate education in isolation.” In a discussion that ranges from […]

Webinar: Alan Liu on “Advocating the Humanities: Values & Strategies for the Digital Age” (Feb. 11, 2013)

The Kean University Faculty Seminar on “The Global Crisis and Promise of Higher Education” (organized in partnership with 4Humanities) will run its next Webinar of the year on February 11, 2012, featuring Alan Liu on “Advocating the Humanities: Values & Strategies For the Digital Age.” The focus of his webinar will be on reframing humanities […]

Public/Not Public: Making the Humanities Count (UCHRI Panel)

On Wednesday, January 23, 2013 from 5 – 7 pm PST, the University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI) will host a panel discussion entitled “Public/Not Public: Making the Humanities Count” on the public university in an era of dwindling public support and the place of the humanities in the university today. The panelists include […]

Humanities in the Twenty-First Century: Innovation in Research and Practice (MLA 2013 Panel)

For the 2013 Modern Language Association convention in Boston, 4Humanities co-leader Christine Henseler organized a panel titled “Humanities in the Twenty-First Century: Innovation in Research and Practice.” The panel, which occurred on January 4, 2013, featured the following papers: “The Promise of Humanities Practice,” Lynn Pasquerella (President, Mount Holyoke College). “Making the Humanities ‘Count,’” David […]

Nithya Caleb, “Whither Humanities In a Market-driven World?”

“India has 15 IITs and an equal number of IIMs, but there’s no exclusive centre for fine arts, philosophy, religion or linguistics,” Nithya Caleb begins in a wide-ranging article in The New Indian Express (17 Dec. 2012) about the shrinking mindshare–not to mention funding share–for the humanities around the world. Interviewing educators and spokespersons for […]

Michael Meranze, “The Knowledge that Dare Not Speak Its Name”

First appeared on Christopher Newfield’s Remaking the University blog, 14 Dec 2012. Reposted by permission. For some time now, the humanities and the interpretive social sciences have been the canaries in the mineshaft of higher education. Language departments have been eliminated or consolidated, plans put in place to charge students higher tuition for taking the […]

Why Science Communication Needs the Humanities

Reflecting on the May 2012 National Academy of Science’s Sackler Colloquium, entitled “The Science of Science Communication,” Assistant Professor of Writing Michael Svoboda argues in a post for the Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media that the humanities have an important role to play in communicating climate science. This role, which Svoboda emphasizes […]