BY JILL R. EHNENN AND CAROLYN BETENSKY Over the past few weeks, three scholars from political science and English departments—Corey Robin (political science, Brooklyn College and CUNY), Ted Underwood (English, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), and Eleanor Courtemanche (English, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)—have offered incisive and poignant reflections on what ChatGPT means to them, and us,…
BY PATRICK FESSENBECKER It is the time of year again when too many brilliant literature scholars find out that they will not be receiving a tenure-track job, and, as in Jacquelyn Ardam’s eloquent lamentation, that their possibilities for staying in the profession are over. The statistics on the situation are stark. Humanities doctorates are taking…
BY RENEE CALKINS, EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, UWM AAUP, University of WIsconsin-Milwaukee National studies have underscored the value employers place on the analytical and communication skills that training in the humanities and social sciences, cornerstones of a liberal arts education, is focused on developing. And the national press has repeatedly highlighted liberal arts education as particularly suited…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL News reports last week that President Trump’s first budget may eliminate support for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has alarmed many of humanities supporters and scholars. But the de-funding of the NEH – or the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) — should…
BY MARTIN KICH If poetry is at its core the effort to give expression to the inexpressible aspects of our experience, then science is often a kind of poetry, or at least provides a complement to the poetic impulse. For science provides both a fundamental challenge to all simplistic notions about our existence and a…
BY MICHAEL DECESARE The May-June issue of Academe included Maria Maisto’s and Seth Kahn’s review of Michael Bérubé’s and Jennifer Ruth’s 2015 book The Humanities, Higher Education, and Academic Freedom: Three Necessary Arguments. What follows is a rejoinder from Bérubé and Ruth. A response from Maisto and Kahn will be published on this blog shortly. We are…
This post does not represent an AAUP endorsement of the events being sponsored by the National Humanities Alliance. I myself am not even a member of this organization. But in a large number of posts to this blog, a number of contributors have made the case for the value of the Humanities, and this organization…
The humanities have more to lose in the current budget wars than either the sciences or technical fields, says AAUP president Cary Nelson, in “Fighting for the Humanities,” just out in the new issue of Academe (the full issue will be released next week). This is because people take it for granted that scientific knowledge…