After reading a series of articles lamenting the death of higher education and critical thinking in the age of ChatGPT, I tempered my despair with Simon Lewsen’s somewhat hopeful essay on the humanities in The Local, which is part of its higher education issue. With the reduction and elimination of humanities, classics, English, and language-related programs across North America, the academic landscape is bleak. But Lewsen, a writing instructor at the University of Toronto, wonders if we’re “misjudging the moment,” mistaking the “flux and turbulence” in higher education for an existential crisis. “In my own classroom, I’ve encountered surprising signs of renewed life in the humanities,” he writes, “which suggest that a renaissance could be possible, at least if people who care about this stuff can rise to meet the moment.” Our world has polarized, yes, but Lewsen suggests that politically dynamic classrooms and a more diverse, democratized university system could electrify places of learning again.
My students are surprised to discover that sophisticated thinkers, regardless of their political leanings, are ideologically promiscuous: in critiquing the U.S. carceral system, the socialist writer Elizabeth Bruenig draws on pre-modern Catholic thought, and in calling for a return to the traditional, pre-nuclear family, the conservative intellectual David Brooks points to queer culture, with its chosen families, as a contemporary model to emulate. In the humanities, right and left converge. Ideologies mutate and reconfigure, like molecules or strands of DNA. I’ve realized that, for students, this discovery is thrilling. It’s one of the unique pleasures that a humanities education used to offer—and could offer again.
More picks about higher education and the humanities
Socrates Would Be Pleased
“With a class of college students and inmates, teaching philosophy in prison is a rowdy, honest and hopeful provocation.”
What Happens After A.I. Destroys College Writing?
“The demise of the English paper will end a long intellectual tradition, but it’s also an opportunity to reëxamine the purpose of higher education.”
Teachers Are Not OK
“AI, ChatGPT, and LLMs ‘have absolutely blown up what I try to accomplish with my teaching.’”
Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College
“ChatGPT has unraveled the entire academic project.”
Does Teaching Literature and Writing Have a Future?
“Learning that one’s job might soon be eliminated by the emergence of an overhyped new technology puts one in good company.”
From the Encampments
“Student reflections on protests for Palestine.”
An American Education: Notes from UATX
“Inside the ‘Forbidden Courses’ at the billionaire-backed University of Austin, the campus of the ‘anti woke’ commentariat.”
Misplaced Trust
“Stolen Indigenous land is the foundation of the land-grant university system. Climate change is its legacy.”
Can AI Unlock the Secrets of the Ancient World?
“Almost 2,000 years ago, a volcano preserved Herculaneum’s vast library of scrolls but left them unreadable. A volunteer army of nerds has been racing to decipher them.”
