HUMANITIES PROGRAMS ARE VANISHING FROM UNIVERSITIES

 

In the face of declining student enrollment, lost revenue, and mounting conservative political scrutiny, university administrators are putting humanities programs on the chopping block. This issue dominated the local news last summer when the West Virginia University Board of Governors approved cutting dozens of degree programs and laid off 143 faculty to help fix a $45 million budget shortfall.

Among the myriad of issues facing higher education, many view this troubling trend facing the humanities as a major crisis.  My own liberal arts education was completed over 50 years ago. Exposure to the menu of different worldviews offered by humanities courses enriched my life. Studying the humanities made me a better lawyer and a more responsible human being.

Over the years, the humanities have undergone many transformations. When our nation was founded, most institutions of higher learning had religious underpinnings. Slowly, secular principles replaced religious-based moral education, and the notion of “the humanities” took hold. In the late nineteenth century, the term was limited to the organized study of Greek and Latin classics. The professors teaching these arcane subjects considered themselves the custodians of a proper civilization under siege from modernity and the scientific method.

According to the Daedalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the beginning of our modern concept of the humanities began in 1936-1937 at Columbia University. Freshman were required to take “a mandatory and interdepartmental curriculum including a reading list of literary, philosophical, and religious texts from Homer to Goethe.” Soon institutions across the country began “a new intellectual context linking course work in languages, literature, history, philosophy, linguistics, religion, art, and history.” By 1945, the Harvard Red Book could confidently claim, “Tradition points to a separation of learning into the three areas of natural science, social studies and the humanities.”

As the twentieth century progressed, so did the humanities. A younger breed of scholars did not identify with the genteel cultivation of the past. Their work and teaching methods were firmly planted in the modern ideals of building on previous studies in search of new perspectives.

In the 1960s, cultural studies began to emerge within the humanities.  At first, this trend was limited to informal explorations and seminars. Today’s students seeking to learn more about their heritage, gender, and sexual orientation demand cultural courses. The offerings include studies in African American history, women’s issues, postcolonial and revisionist history, and LGBTI issues.

Until recently, there was an intense debate between the older traditionalists, (many of whom have now passed on) and younger scholars involving the influence of cultural studies on the humanities. A well-known example is Harold Bloom, the famous literary critic and humanities professor at Yale. Bloom wrote endlessly in defense of classic literature as being above social commentary on the issues of the day. He believed that great books should be read only for pleasure. Opponent scholars argued that even works considered part of the western canon were open to criticism for protecting the powerful or for marginalizing certain groups of people.

In 2024, the new progressive school has won out. The good news is social relevancy. The bad, is overspecialization and more insular humanities programs.

With this background in mind, why are the humanities disappearing from campuses across the country? At West Virginia University, the proposal was to dismiss seven per cent of its faculty and eliminate thirty-two majors with humanities at the top of the target list. While enrollment suffered during the pandemic, there was no attempt to recoup revenue through less draconian means. The university faculty voted 797 to 100 to pass a no-confidence resolution against the school’s administration for its poor performance.

WVU is not the only university taking these measures. Public universities across the country have slashed budgets. In North Carolina, a new law has made humanities professors at state universities ineligible for distinguished professorships. The President at the University of Wisconsin recently suggested that the school system shift away from liberal arts programs. Most troubling, there appears to be an organized campaign in Republican state legislatures to do away with cultural studies in public universities that address issues like race, gender, or sexual identity.

If conservative state legislatures are able to eliminate humanities programs they will succeed in keeping the Republican monopoly on the least educated voters by keeping them less well-educated for the next generation. The Republican goal is to fortify their voting strongholds and to create a prolonged two-tiered educational system. Students graduating with no exposure to the humanities will become resentful against those students from public universities in blue states and from elite universities who have the advantage of a well-rounded liberal arts education.

It is important to note that university humanities departments have contributed to their own demise. Some curriculums have lost sight of the assumptions that supported their original aims. Recent studies offer critical assessments on what needs to be done to both recover and reinvent the framework of the liberal arts for the modern age.

Higher education is not just job training. A liberal arts education is one of the great foundations of a democracy. Once the humanities expanded into cultural studies, students were able to argue about whether sexism and racism were bad or whether the rule of law, and free speech were good. All classmates attending the college of their choice should be permitted to take part in these important humanities discussions.