Education And Activist Humanities, Now More Than Ever

We need to bracket our present institutional fixation on enrollments and majors. To read the value of the humanities as only measurable by those metrics, or by dollars earned, is to condemn ourselves to a state of perpetual failure.
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Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks in New York, Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016, where she conceded her defeat to Republican Donald Trump after the hard-fought presidential election. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks in New York, Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016, where she conceded her defeat to Republican Donald Trump after the hard-fought presidential election. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Like many other Americans, I am stunned by the result of the election. Certainly every group that has been named directly or indirectly by our next president as being of lesser value or of suspect character as "Americans" has reason to be afraid. Speaking as an educator, and a professor of the humanities, I am sure that what I am about to convey is common at our colleges and universities--students, faculty, and staff, are depressed, fearful, and doubtful of the future of the educational enterprise. So many of the lessons we teach--about the value of culture, critical thinking, history, philosophy--seem now invalidated with the election to the highest office of the land of an individual who has expressed in word and behavior nothing but distain and contempt for these things. The implications of this devaluation are even greater when we factor in the impact of his dismissal of science on our increasingly fragile planet.

It is precisely under these conditions that we educators must set an example for our students, in staying even more firm in our commitment to education and knowledge, rational debate and civil discourse. But we also need to be both more explicit in voicing and acting on that commitment and more capacious in our understanding of the role of the humanities in the world. We need to develop a capacity for being more than advocates for education, we need to become serious activists for it, and in places beyond the campus too.

When we put forward any discussion of topics such as ethics, social justice, gender, sexuality, race, religion, culture, we need to place those discussions in the context of our new contemporary situation. In so doing we may often find ourselves taking a stance in opposition to the prevailing ideology. I recommend we embrace that oppositionality and form lines of solidarity with others. We need to see how rational and civil discourse and self-reflective contemplation are necessary tools when we increasingly hear that they are inconvenient and dispensable niceties. In so doing we make a renewed and intensified commitment to the very idea of humanity and the greater good. We must adapt our point of reference according to this new historical situation.

Similarly, we need to bracket our present institutional fixation on enrollments and majors. To read the value of the humanities as only measurable by those metrics, or by dollars earned, is to condemn ourselves to a state of perpetual failure. We will never be "good enough" because the presumption of value is skewed against us. We must put such measurements in perspective, and recognize what I have been calling the "invisible humanities."

By that I mean the arts, music, literature, philosophy, et cetera that circulate in the public sphere unattended to and unrecognized by academic measurements. We need now, more than ever, to connect our work to a public that is of its own accord vibrant with the humanities that are invisible to us because they take non-academic shapes and forms. We need to make bridges to that world. More than ever, the public needs to know that in the face of brutality and crudeness, the humanities in various manifestations can put us in touch not with elitism and snobbery, but with compassion and an aspiration to be better in ourselves and toward others.

The humanities can help us go some distance toward healing the wounds of this historical event, but along with the solace that is absolutely necessary for our mental and spiritual health, we need to regard the humanities as a strategic tool with which to fight against ignorance, bigotry, vulgarity, and cruelty. The vast number of people who voted against all those things were between the ages of 18 and 25. We should take hope in that, and also recognize our new responsibilities to them, and to the world.

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