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This really isn't so much about Lit/Crit, but I couldn't let David Brooks' latest column pass by without comment. And the topic would bore to death the posters in the politics forum.
Brooks has really just repackaged the old stuff of Allan Bloom: serpents in the humanities garden like gender studies, history from below, etc., have ruined the humanities. Of course nostalgia for an imagined, more wonderful past, before it was trampled by hippies, liberals, or whatever, is a standard conservative trope. But this one seems over the top to me:
"Somewhere along the way, many people in the humanities lost faith in [their] uplifting mission. The humanities turned from an inward to an outward focus. They were less about the old notions of truth, beauty and goodness and more about political and social categories like race, class and gender. Liberal arts professors grew more moralistic when talking about politics but more tentative about private morality because they didn’t want to offend anybody."
Brooks' wringing of hands over the decline in the humanities also seems not to be supported by data. The percentage of college students studying one of the humanities has been remarkably stable since the 1940s. You can see data (and a nice essay) about that here. There was actually a big spike in the 1960s, from which we have declined. But if you regard the spike as an aberration (Hippies!) you don't see much change over the long haul -- we're down maybe a little.
I think he's mostly upset that, for example, historians now study everybody, not just the important people. And literary theorists can also cast their nets wider.
I'm not worried about the humanities. They've survived many centuries and will keep chugging along.
Brooks has really just repackaged the old stuff of Allan Bloom: serpents in the humanities garden like gender studies, history from below, etc., have ruined the humanities. Of course nostalgia for an imagined, more wonderful past, before it was trampled by hippies, liberals, or whatever, is a standard conservative trope. But this one seems over the top to me:
"Somewhere along the way, many people in the humanities lost faith in [their] uplifting mission. The humanities turned from an inward to an outward focus. They were less about the old notions of truth, beauty and goodness and more about political and social categories like race, class and gender. Liberal arts professors grew more moralistic when talking about politics but more tentative about private morality because they didn’t want to offend anybody."
Brooks' wringing of hands over the decline in the humanities also seems not to be supported by data. The percentage of college students studying one of the humanities has been remarkably stable since the 1940s. You can see data (and a nice essay) about that here. There was actually a big spike in the 1960s, from which we have declined. But if you regard the spike as an aberration (Hippies!) you don't see much change over the long haul -- we're down maybe a little.
I think he's mostly upset that, for example, historians now study everybody, not just the important people. And literary theorists can also cast their nets wider.
I'm not worried about the humanities. They've survived many centuries and will keep chugging along.