Faddishness is killing the humanities

Doctoral students are writing more about power and identity than beauty and tradition. This trend is killing the humanities.A new study from the American Academy of Sciences and Letters has analyzed humanities and social science dissertations at U.S. universities over the last 65 years. Dissertations shed light on the norms, language, and concepts that are used in scholarly fields.The evidence affirms that there is a crisis in the humanities. The number of master’s and doctoral degrees is at record lows. One major reason for this is that studies in the humanities have been shaped by modern trends, such as postcolonial, gender, and identity studies. Such devotion to intellectual fashion strikes at the heart of the humanities, the origin of which is classical. According to Cicero, the great first-century Roman orator, the study of the humanities aims at “humanitas”: the cultivation of human excellence in thought and action. It also accords with “pietas”: duty to God, family, and state.The purpose of the humanities is to help human beings realize their nature, which is fixed and universal. If the humanities are geared toward money-making, then they will die. So, too, if they are oriented toward changing fashions and ideology.This insight pervaded early American education. It guided the formation of schools and colleges throughout the United States. And no one articulated this view — and taught more future school founders — than John Witherspoon, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.Witherspoon became the sixth president of the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University, in 1768. His first graduate student was James Madison, the father of the Constitution and the future U.S. president.Prior to coming to America, Witherspoon was an orthodox minister who opposed the Moderates in Scotland. The Moderates looked down upon “tender-conscienced inferiors,” ignorant common men uninstructed in the norms of high society and committed to passing on inherited traditions.Witherspoon fought back against such condescension. He charged the Moderates with doctrinal laxity. He accused them of trying to please the upper classes. He blasted them for mimicking the fashionable language of the age. They talked only of “social duties,” not of doctrine.The Moderates, according to Witherspoon, avoided “the rank smell of orthodoxy” and spoke of it with a “sneer.” But they had their own orthodoxy: to follow changing intellectual fashions like “fashions of clothes and dress.”Chasing modern trends is a bad rule to guide the church. It is just as bad for guiding the academy. Witherspoon knew that. And as a minister and college president, he applied a better rule—the “strict, universal, scrupulous regard to truth.”Witherspoon’s aversion to modern trends, though, did not make him backward. As one biographer stated, Witherspoon gave “a touch of what was modern and liberalizing to the studies of the curriculum.” But he was never enslaved to the “prejudices of the times.”He incorporated modern languages and physical sciences into the curriculum. But he did not discard the study of Greek and Latin. A strictly modern, progressive college president would have replaced the classical languages and subjects with the modern. Witherspoon did not.Witherspoon thought alongside his civilizational predecessors. He wrote, “The remains of the ancients are still the standard of taste.” When he wrote about aesthetics, he said the “beauties of nature … belong to every age.”Now we do not talk about beauty. We do not encourage our students to write about what remains the same throughout the ages. And the study of the humanities has suffered for it.As the American Academy of Sciences and Letters study shows, the language of beauty has steadily declined. The words “American,” “European,” and “Western” have “become more significantly negative in tone over time across all fields.” The words “identity,” “activism,” and “subversive” have been used more positively. And the language of identity has risen considerably, at a rate that doubles every eight to nine years. These trends are all consistent with the popularity of poststructuralism in the academy.One surprising finding, however, is that the language of truth-seeking has been used positively “across all fields and decades.” But there is an explanation for this: human beings are truth-seeking animals. The question is where one ought to look for truth.In the academy, the humanities have looked away from Western and American cultural heritage. They have pursued intellectual fashions, namely race, sex, and gender studies, instead. And they have paid the price, as humanities doctorates have fallen nearly 49% since 2015.FOUR IN 10 UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS SAY ‘OFFENSIVE SPEECH’ DESERVES PROSECUTION: POLLBut students want a challenge. As Harvard University seemingly has rediscovered — according to a recent Wall Street Journal report — students will flock to “old school” courses. Students have a burning desire to read books, to write essays, to engage in constructive debate without the intrusion of electronic devices. They want “an antidote to The Machine” and, I would add, intellectual fads.Students are yearning for an education that prioritizes truth, piety, and humanity. Responding to this need is the only way to revive the humanities.