News articles and commentary on the place of the humanities in the modern world.
Happy graduation, humanities students!
Happy graduation, humanities students! "Better a few good scholars than many indifferent ones." You embody the meaning of George Washington's mandate to James McHenry, to paraphrase: it is infinitely better to have a few good [...]
Valuing liberal arts in the age of STEM (Steven Lindner, NY Daily News)
How liberal arts can be, despite conventional thinking, the pathway to economic success. From the article: Employers' demand for professionals with a liberal arts background might actually be greater than generally perceived, largely because their [...]
Beyond Op-Eds: New Ways of Advocating the Humanities (W. Robert Connor, Inside Higher Ed)
Beyond Op-Eds: New Ways of Advocating the Humanities: the former director of the National Humanities Center discusses ways to get teachers, and students, more involved in explaining how and why the humanities are important. From [...]
Did Newton practice “junk science”? (Washington Post)
Did Newton practice junk science? A journalist takes issue with Newton's preoccupation with alchemy. As she puts it: ... Newton was super into alchemy, a medieval "science" that preceded chemistry. Practitioners believed it was possible to [...]
The master economy and student majors (Jeffrey Dorfman, Forbes)
The master economy and student majors: should states grant incentives to students to select a particular course of study? Dorfman says no: The logic behind such proposals is that state funding should be concentrated on [...]
The fight over liberal arts education in Japan (Rie Mori, AAC&U)
The fight over liberal arts education in Japan. The humanities and liberal arts are under pressure from the government, but have allies in the business community. From the article: the national government wants to focus national [...]
Scholars bulldozing history (George Will, Washington Post)
Scholars bulldozing history. How Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study will demolish an important site of the American Revolution: the Battle of Princeton. From the article: In today’s academia there are many scholars against scholarship, including [...]
Where it’s at: the mystery and origins of the @ symbol (BBC News)
Where it's at: or better, where "at" (@) has been. What is modern is ancient, if we should notice. From the article: "The earliest yet discovered reference to the @ symbol is a religious one. [...]
Computers transform our knowledge of the past (James O’Malley, Little Atoms)
Computers transform our knowledge of the past. According to the author, computerized quantitative analysis offers insights that traditional historical study cannot. From the article: Huge swathes of our past are slowly but surely getting digitised [...]
A classics major adds value for engineering and STEM (Forbes)
A classics major adds value for engineering and STEM: a profile of Tim O'Reilly, who brings classical ethics and eloquence to the world of technology. From the article: O’Reilly has a deep understanding of how [...]