Crisis IS the Humanities
For a long time, people have been heralding the “crisis in the humanities”: low student enrollment, perceived professional irrelevance, and insufficient funding. I, however, do not believe that the crisis comes from external forces, but from an institutional aversion to anything external. Professors in the Humanities seem to be suffering from an allergy to reality that has created a bubble in which the norms, mores, and expectations of the real world are not just neglected, but shunned. There is no crisis in the Humanities. The crisis is the Humanities.
First, I want to elaborate on the allergy to reality I attribute to Humanities professors. More formally, this allergy derives from a bastardized form of “prefigurative politics” a form of activism that, according to political activist Jonathan Smucker, “seeks to demonstrate the ‘better world’ it envisions for the future in the actions it takes today.” According to scholars Paul Raekstad and Sofa Saio Gradin, prefigurative politics is geared toward “building a new society in the shell of the old” by making “a strategic commitment to developing revolutionary organizations that embody the structures of deliberation and decision-making that a post-capitalist society is to contain.” Hatred of American society aside, prefigurative politics does not seem that threatening; trying to model the world one wants to see is in itself, uncontroversial.
However, two developments have made prefigurative politics dangerous: the tendency to treat one’s prefigurative bubble as the real world itself, and the tendency to widen that bubble until it encompasses an entire department or the Humanities as a whole. Prefigurative politics done badly goes from a performative experience to a concretized ideological camp in which the righteous preside and dissenters are “canceled.” Those who disagree with, say, anti-capitalist sentiment, are relegated to the bubble’s margins (at best). This “bubble world,” is constituted by illiberal forms of DEI, the demonization of classical liberal values, the reprimand of critical inquiry and dissenting voices, and a significant dislike of the world.
I see the latest iteration of prefigurative politics in the article, “Humanities Chairs ‘Pessimistic’ About Their Future Departments,” which looks at a new study by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences that examines the outlook of several humanities department chairs in colleges across the country. The professors interviewed attribute the crisis in the humanities to political pressure, declining enrollments, administrative priorities, and skepticism about the value of a humanities education.
By the article’s end, a reader may get the impression that the humanities is a fine collective institution that is under threat from outside forces that do not understand the benefit they bring to students as they prepare for the real world.
But these chairs aren’t living in the real world.
The article blames the crises in the humanities on external pressures like neoliberal metrics, political attacks, STEM prioritization, and parental anxiety about their children’s job prospects. These are all causal elements for the humanities’ current crisis, but I would argue that academics, themselves, contribute most to this crisis. Ideological intolerance, overemphasis on social justice, and niche studies do little to prepare students for life after college. The fact that these things are not addressed at all in the article is indicative of the “make believe” condoned by prefigurative politics. If the chairs were serious, they would address or at least acknowledge the detriments of Critical Social Justice (e.g., wokeness) and its negative effects on free speech, critical inquiry, or anything that does not attribute society’s biggest problems to “whiteness.”
The chairs attempt to defend themselves also misaligns with reality. They insist that the humanities are uniquely capable of fostering self-reflection, civic development, and meaningful intellectual engagement. Perhaps they are, but this is not what the research bears out. According to organizations like SHRM, AAC & U, and Constructive Dialogue Institute, among businesses’ biggest complaint about new employees is their inability to communicate sufficiently in speaking, writing, critical thinking, and other soft skills thought to be the responsibility of the humanities. This can’t be blamed solely on professorial incompetence. It’s because the real world, a world in which employees have to be able to communicate effectively with themselves, clients, and others, is of little concern to them. After all, that is the world they are trying to change if not “tear down.” Preparing students for such a world becomes a conflict of interest.
If humanities professors are suffering from an allergy to reality, what would be the metaphorical Prilosec? Many in Federal and State legislations may look to ban certain behavior, but that presents its own problems. Perhaps we should let the market speak. If enrollment is declining and sufficient preparation for life is not being done, something has to change before institutions begin cutting their losses by cutting the humanities.
