The Humanities and the National Interest

Rising Above the Gathering Storm, a widely noticed 2005 report from the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine prepared in response to a bipartisan congressional request, opened with the following pronouncement: "The United States takes deserved pride in the vitality of its economy, which forms the foundation of our high quality of life, our national security, and our hope that our children and grandchildren will inherit ever-greater opportunities. That vitality is derived in large part from the productivity of well-trained people and the steady stream of scientific and technical innovations they produce. Without high-quality, knowledge-intensive jobs and the innovative enterprises that lead to discovery and new technology, our economy will suffer and our people will face a lower standard of living" (Rising 1). Replacing just a few words, let us perform a thought experiment:

The United States takes deserved pride in the vitality of its educational and cultural institutions, which form the foundation of our high quality of life, our national security, and our hope that our children and grandchildren will inherit ever-greater opportunities. That vitality is derived in large part from the productivity of well-trained people and the steady stream of scholarly and creative innovations they produce. Without high-quality, knowledge-intensive jobs and the innovative enterprises that lead to discovery and new research and teaching in the humanities, our way of life will suffer and our people will face a lower standard of living.

Lest such an exercise seem frivolous, we should note that the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in response to a more recent bipartisan request from Senators Lamar Alexander and Mark Warner, and Representatives David Price and Thomas Petri, has formed a Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences charged with addressing the question: "What are the top ten actions that Congress, state governments, universities, foundations, educators, individual benefactors, and others should take now to maintain national excellence in humanities and social scientific scholarship and education, and to achieve long-term national goals for our intellectual and economic well-being; for a stronger, more vibrant civil society; and for the success of cultural diplomacy in the 21st century?" (Commission n.p.).¹

Rising Above the Gathering Storm proposed significant increases in government funding for basic research, unprecedented investment in math, science, and engineering education—including recruiting 10,000 new K-12 teachers per year—and tax incentives to support corporate innovation in science and technology. Five years later, however, the National Academies concluded that the outlook for American competition in the world marketplace had further deteriorated and that the gathering storm had increased to "a Category 5" (Rising Revisited 5). If the Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences sets sail in such conditions, and in the teeth of winds that have been thrashing the humanities for decades, what success can it hope for?

The perilous state of the humanities has been featured prominently in an avalanche of books about the crisis in liberal arts education in recent decades, first by those offended by its radicalization, then by those offended by its corporatization, and more recently by those offended by its ossification and inefficiency.² The humanities crisis in particular has likewise been subjected to thorough analysis in a number of essay collections and special issues of journals.³ If only for the sake of originality, the Commission might begin by avoiding any use of the word crisis.

No doubt there is a jobs crisis for academic humanists—not a new crisis but year by year, with only the occasional reversal, a deepening crisis, with tenure-track jobs being cannibalized even as tenure itself retains its stranglehold on the university. There is a publication crisis, as venues for book and article publication shrink even as the requirements for entry-level teaching positions, not to mention tenure, ratchet up to dizzying levels. And surely there is...