Symposium participants take clear-eyed look at humanities in academe

By Franklin Crawford

But the biggest challenges to the academic humanities come from economic forces that thrive on the creation and manipulation of new information, the product and province of sciences and technology. In order to survive in a global economy, research universities like Cornell have corporatized and marketed themselves, investing in hard science, technology and professional programs that are self-sustaining. As Cornell President Hunter Rawlings has said, "The research university is increasingly abandoning its historic role as independent thinker and critic and is embracing a new role as collaborator with, beneficiary of, and enabler of, government, business and industry money has always been important to universities but never so much as today in our information-based, highly competitive research and teaching environment."

At a symposium April 3 in Olin Hall, Rawlings joined a panel of Cornell administrators and faculty, each a humanist by calling, who are seeking to counter this crisis of confidence in the humanities the old fashioned way: They are talking openly and honestly about it. The symposium titled "The Future of the Humanities in the Corporate University: A Report from Berlin and an Invitation to a Cornell Dialogue," included presentations from Rawlings; Provost Biddy Martin; Walter Cohen, vice provost and dean of the Graduate School; and Philip Lewis, the Harold Tanner Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. The papers were condensed versions of those they delivered this past October at the Humboldt University of Berlin.

Rawlings is a tireless advocate for the humanities in general and the liberal arts at Cornell in particular. He pulls no punches in his assessment of the situation. "Viewed from any perspective, the humanities have fallen behind their more worldly cousins in the contemporary university," said Rawlings. "We could ignore this trend altogether, or simply lament it and move along, confident that the pragmatic disciplines in the university will prosper whatever happens to the humanities. This would be, in my view, a tragic error, for universities and for society at large."

A classics scholar himself, Rawlings re-emphasized his conviction that the humanities remain central to research universities for "several compelling and interrelated reasons." He listed four vital functions humanities serve in creating a 21st century citizen:

• The humanities function as "keepers and conveyors of culture in its many forms."
• For more than 25 years the humanities have advanced the study of formerly marginalized cultures, leading to the development of gender and ethnic studies. "While these fields have generated a certain amount of contentiousness within the academy and in political life, those earning degrees today are far more capable of broad thinking than those who graduated 25 years ago," Rawlings said.
• The humanities and the arts "help mediate between high culture and mass culture, between elitism and populism. They thus expand our cultural reach, address problems of social structures and raise enduring questions about what is worthy of our students' study"; and
• humanists, more than other scholars, have "historically looked for insights in other areas of endeavor and used them to inform judgments of human value, relevance and historical significance Humanists give us not only a greater depth of knowledge and understanding for its own sake, they are also catalysts for change."

Rawlings quoted Harvard University scholar James Engell: "The humanities absorb and interpret the results of science knowledge and technology for our inner lives, values and ideals."

But in an era when money talks, doctoral candidates in the humanities walk. Reading from a paper titled "The Economics of Doctoral Education in Literature," Cohen followed Rawlings with results of discouraging studies on the job market for humanities Ph.D.s 1975 to 1995. Though he focused on literature, Cohen said these findings apply to humanities Ph.D.s in general, as well as to doctorates in the interpretive social sciences.

In the absence of tenure-track jobs, some universities are cutting back Ph.D. enrollment in the humanities, possibly in an effort to provide better funding to students, Cohen suggested. It takes a long time to complete a degree in the humanities and because there is a considerable attrition rate among candidates. In addition, the cost of producing a tenured faculty member in the humanities can run as a high as $1 million, Cohen pointed out. While the number of Ph.D.s awarded is up, the availability of tenure-track jobs has remained flat or increased only slightly. In 1996-97 only 37 percent of Ph.D.s took a tenure-track job in the humanities. Since 1995, Ph.D. applications at leading humanities universities have dropped almost 30 percent.

"(But) the coincidence of boom in national employment with bust in academic job market began pushing graduate applications down before 1995," Cohen said. "Perennially grim career opportunities will cut off the supply of future talent at its source."

One theory, although there is no clear data to support it, is that current numbers indicate a return to employment figures for the humanities field of the 1950s. Of all fields of higher education, the humanities were most influenced by the social turbulence of the 1960s: American studies, gender and ethnic studies all reflect the cultural legacy of those times.

In excerpts from a paper titled "Institutional Humanities: The Marginal Center," Lewis said the very structure of a research university where science and technology dominate and the humanities are subordinate is "a major factor underlying the current situation of the humanities." That structure and the university's mission must be changed if the humanities are to once again play a central role in higher education, he said.

"The institutional locus of such a change in the research university will have to be its teaching program in which all undergraduate students encounter the humanities as something other than a frill," Lewis said. "We have long recognized and often demonstrated the possibility of integrating the humanities and the arts with science and technology in ways that rationalize their coexistence and seek common, or at least intersecting, horizons for the research and problem-solving they pursue."

But, Lewis said, "such a project has never been asserted as the overarching collaboration that should permeate the whole of a university's educational program."

A step in that direction was taken in March when Martin announced the introduction of a mandatory summer reading program for incoming freshman. The reading will focus on Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond, a provocative cross disciplinary tour de force embracing the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences.

In her remarks, Martin said the humanities need not be marginalized or relegated to serving simply as the anointed watchdogs for ethical dilemmas in human genome research. While she supports cross-disciplinary work, Martin said she does not feel it's necessary for humanists to become scientists or vice versa. She also believes the traditional humanities and its subfields are fertile and emerging in ways that are not yet perceptible as a unified movement.

"It seems dangerous to set up the humanities in relation to the sciences as either a kind of conscience or as a kind of counter scientific practice," said Martin, and she referred to the increased sophistication and less politically charged areas of gender, race and sexuality studies, where novel uses of language and aesthetics are being created. "I don't think anything with the force of a major counterattack is underway against the investments in technology and science, but I do think some extremely compelling work is being done," she said.