Helping Humanities Ph.D.s Thrive Beyond Academia

Here are eight imperatives—all of them drawing strength and sustenance from the humanities:

1. We need a way of defining and pursuing progress that doesn’t reduce that concept to something that only comes from a digital device.


2. We desperately need access to values and wisdom that aren’t corrupted by the relentless financial metrics and imposed flavor-of

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When everything is in flux, we need people who can move across worlds. In times of upheaval, grief, anxiety and rising discomfort, polymaths—those who wear many hats, blend skills, and cross disciplines—are essential.They thrive in the spaces between, finding connections others might miss.When things shift beneath us, it’s these transitional thinke... See more

You can no longer make students do the reading or the writing. So what’s left? Only this: give them work they want to do. And help them want to do it. What, again, is education? The non-coercive rearranging of desire.

Within five years, it will make little sense for scholars of history to keep producing monographs in the traditional mold—nobody will... See more