Voices For the Humanities

4Humanities is a platform for people from different parts of society and the world to give voice to the enduring and contemporary importance of the humanities. Why study and creative expression in such areas as literature, history, languages, philosophy, classics, art history, cultural studies, and others (see “What Are the Humanities?”) so valuable to individuals and societies? The voices gathered here say why.

* 4Humanities seeks out both original and reposted statements about the humanities from people in business, the sciences, entertainment, universities, high schools, and other sectors. We also report on significant developments and initiatives related to the humanities.

* Listen to the voices in our sections on “Advocacy Statements & Campaigns,” “The Changing Humanities,” “Student Voices,” and “International Correspondents.”

* Also listen to the voices gathered in our special projects “Humanities, Plain & Simple” and “Backpack Mini-documentaries.”

For those wishing to consult resources in framing their own statement for the humanities, 4Humanities offers a “Guide to Issues in Humanities Advocacy” and its “The Humanities Matter!” infographic.

Google on Hiring Humanities PhDs

Google leads the search for recent humanities PhD graduates, a recent article in Times Higher Education reports. Damon Horowitz, director of engineering at Google, discussed the question of “Why you should quit your technology job and get a humanities PhD” at last week’s BiblioTech conference at Stanford University. As Marissa Mayer, the 20th employee taken […]

Hidden Connections: Knowledge Exchange between the Arts and Humanities and the Private, Public, and Third Sectors

A report released today and commissioned by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and undertaken by the Center for Business Research (CBR) at Cambridge Judge Business School has shown that academics from the arts and humanities interact widely across the private, public and third sectors. The report, Hidden Connections, is the biggest study of […]

Campaign for the Future of Higher Education Launches May 17

The Campaign for the Future of Higher Education (CFHE) is a grassroots national campaign to support higher education. Initiated in Los Angeles, California on January 21, 2011 by leaders of faculty organizations from 21 states, the mission of the campaign is to ensure that quality higher education is accessible to all in the coming decades. […]

The Changing Profession

Inside Higher Ed has published a substantial article on the challenges facing many university professors in the United States, emphasizing the shrinking numbers of tenured and tenure-track faculty at many institutions. The article discusses many reasons for this decline, including long-term, systemic, external and ideological reasons that pre-date the current financial crisis: “The American professoriate […]

You’re getting the universities you want

The Globe and Mail (Canada) has a bunch of articles looking at universities and the place of the humanities. One is by Clifford Orwin of the University of Toronto titled, You’re getting the universities you want – and deserve. He argues that societal pressures on public universities don’t give us much wiggle room. Society wants […]

American Council of Learned Societies Annual Meeting: Humanities and Higher Education

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 […]

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 […]