Ruth Simmons Delivers Stirring Tribute to the Humanities

There has been a concerted assault on all forms of learning that are not brutally utilitarian. The Modern Language Association’s end-of-the-year job listings in English, literature, and foreign languages dropped 21 percent for 2008-2009 from the previous year, the biggest decline in thirty-four years. The humanities’ share of college degrees is les

There are two pieces of advice I typically give to students who are in their final year of college. This may come as strange advice from someone who majored in electrical engineering and got a PhD in math modeling of computer security, but I first tell students I encounter to spend the remainder of their time in college filling their minds with the

The faculty understand their role as not only to empower students with skills but also to open them up to the major struggles and questions of a religious life.

The assault on education began more than a century ago by industrialists and capitalists such as Andrew Carnegie. In 1891, Carnegie congratulated the graduates of the Pierce College of Business for being “fully occupied in obtaining a knowledge of shorthand and typewriting” rather than wasting time “upon dead languages.” The industrialist Richard T

“When I teach Black Intellectual History, I understand that I am teaching to the students in the room and all of their ancestors. We are all there. On tender ground.”