Joseph Keegin, the editor of The Point, gives us a lot to think about in this piece at The Chronicle of Higher Education. Here is a taste: As academic humanities departments shed undergraduates and lose both prestige and funding, professors...
humanities
Are humanities scholars engaged in too much activism?
Today I recorded Episode 100 of The Way of Improvement Leads Home Podcast. It will drop on Sunday with the title “Christian Historians as Activists?” I have no guest for this episode. Instead, I use the episode to redeliver my...
The Author’s Corner with Kocku von Stuckrad
Kocku von Stuckrad is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Groningen. This interview is based on his new book, A Cultural History of the Soul: Europe and North America from 1870 to the Present (Columbia University Press, 2022)....
Will Christian colleges and universities survive?
There is A LOT to consider in Catholic moral philosopher Charles Camosy‘s recent piece at America. Here is a section that got my attention: As institutions’ connections to Christianity become frayed, other ideologies have gained ground. Too often, Christian values...
“A university that is only good at STEM education is nothing more than a trade school.”
Avi Kak came to Purdue to work in a university, and not in a trade school. In a letter to the editor of the Purdue Exponent he says that the Purdue English Department deserves more respect. Here is a taste:...
90% of people who majored in a humanities-related field are living happy and fulfilling lives
Here is Scott Jaschik at Inside Higher Ed: Articles suggesting that humanities graduates are poor or unhappy are abundant. But the opposite is true. According to a 2019 Gallup poll cited in a new report by the Humanities Indicators Project of the...
NEH Announces August 2021 grant winners
Read the entire list here. Here are a few that funded projects that caught my eye: Auburn University Outright: $189,837[Landmarks of American History]Project Director: Elijah Gaddis; Keith Hebert (co-project director)Project Title: Bloody Sunday, Selma, and the Long Civil Rights MovementProject...
“The disposition that constitutes the humanities is not the exclusive possession of deans and donors and hiring committees”
With the decline in the humanities at colleges and universities, it is important that non-academic institutions raise the questions that animate humanities learning. What does it mean to be human? What is truth? What is beauty? How shall we live?...
The humanities are on the rise in community colleges
And they are shrinking everywhere else. Here is Scott Jaschik at Insider Higher Ed: Before the pandemic, the humanities were experiencing a period of substantial growth at community colleges but shrinkage everywhere else. And that extends to the entire world....
“The humanities face continued marginalization despite increasing evidence of the broad civic and social harm that results from neglecting them.”
The quote in the title of this post comes from Grant Kaplan’s piece “The Crisis in Catholic Theology” published last week at America. Here is a taste: Today, although concern for the future of Catholic universities remains high, relatively little...
Class of 2021: What’s in your toolbox?
Historian David Perry offers some advice to the class of 2021: We understand more or less the science of viruses, of germ theory, of infection. We know how to quarantine and that it works, and with modern telecommunications, quarantine didn’t...
Who will enhance humanities research at Christian colleges?
I am happy for my STEM colleagues at Christian colleges. Here is Inside Higher Ed: Nine Christian colleges will receive more than $1.5 million in total grant funding as part of a project to enhance science, technology, engineering and mathematics research at Council...
National Endowment for the Humanities announces its latest round of grants
Here are a few that caught my eye: University of Arkansas, Little Rock Outright: $325,043[Humanities Collections and Reference Resources]Project Director: Deborah BaldwinProject Title: Mapping Urban Fracture: Charting the Context and Consequence of the Little Rock Central High CrisisProject Description: The...
Recruiting humanities majors
Here is an e-mail I received today about a wonderful resource from the National Humanities Alliance: The National Humanities Alliance is pleased to announce the release of Strategies for Recruiting Students to the Humanities: A Comprehensive Resource! This resource, grounded in...
“The Ethic of Being”
Note: This piece is a slightly revised version of a post I wrote on February 20, 2020. –JF This week in Created and Called for Community at Messiah University we are exploring the Judeo-Christian creation accounts in Genesis 1 and 2. On Tuesday we read...
The liberal arts teach the “pursuit of truth and the creation of virtuous citizens in the community.” We need both more than ever.
Future American historians will wonder why at precisely the time the country needed citizens who understood citizenship, the meaning of democracy, ethics, science, historical thinking, and how to build an argument based on truth, facts, and evidence, we decided to...
What do Americans think about the humanities?
Elizabeth Redden reports at Inside Higher Ed on a new survey from the Humanities Indicators Project of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Here is a taste: Just over half (56 percent) of Americans agree strongly with the statement that […]
Can we “reopen the American mind?”
Jon Baskin and Anastasia Berg are humanists and co-editors of The Point. Today at The New York Times they join the chorus of thinkers and intellectuals concerned about the fate of the humanities in American life. They are optimistic: …the […]
Did you or your child benefit from a liberal arts or humanities education? Write a letter!
The liberal arts and humanities are in jeopardy right now at colleges and universities. Schools are cutting programs and firing professors in these fields. Spring Arbor University in Michigan just canned one of its best professors. Liberty University and Southwest...
Spring Arbor University and the “scandal of the evangelical college”
Last month we asked: “What is happening at Spring Arbor University?” The post centered on Spring Arbor University‘s decision to dump their most promising young Christian scholar, English professor Jeff Bilbro. In that post I wrote, “Seldom does one find...