HUMANIST

“Humanism is a rational philosophy informed by science, inspired by art, and motivated by compassion.” — American Humanist Association

I’m proud to be a Los Angeles Institute of Humanities Fellow.

My academic career has been spent in traditional humanities fields—English departments, comparative literature departments, history departments—as well as more recently conceived humanities departments like Modern Thought and Literature, American Studies, and Media & Cultural Studies.

The humanities are under attack from a number of sides, but one thing is clear: the majority of people with college degrees now vote for Democrats, the majority of people who don’t vote for Republicans. Republican legislators at the national and state level regularly vote to limit funding for higher education.  This makes sense for them—why support an institution that turns citizens against them? Whether they are educated in humanities, social sciences, arts, or sciences, college graduates come out seeing the world in a way that favors Democratic agendas (climate change intervention, international cooperation, social safety nets, people first) rather than Republican ones (nativism, nationalism, militarism, corporations first).

The college curriculum has always been in flux—it is always the result of many decisions by many individual professors. We each decide what we will teach and now, and we work together as departments and schools to forge requirements for degrees and general education. We need only to look at how central Greek and Latin were to higher education in the 19th century to see the vast changes over time. But when the curriculum is also under pressure from central administrations to concentrate on fields with funding, and that funding is determined by legislators with a bias toward military industrial and commercial interests, the intellectual life of the nation suffers.  For most of the 20th century the humanities were firmly at the center of most college curricula.  That is changing in some ways that are intellectually justifiable, but in many that are not, that are responding to political pressure.

Although I now teach in an arts department, I continue to work as cooperating faculty to a number of humanities departments, and continue to argue the value of education in the humanities for all.