Jim Leach[1]
�STEM, the Humanities, and Global Education�
Distinguished Speaker Series
The College of Education
University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa
October 15, 2013
Dean Colangelo, distinguished scholars, friends:
It is my intent
to address the psychological rupture that is emerging
between STEM and the humanities and suggest that if not reconsidered, this
misconceived cleavage could affect our quality of life and American leadership in the world.
My thesis
is that the humanities and fields of inquiry related
to science, technology, engineering and math are complementary rather than competitive. Each set of disciplines is essential. Each bolsters the other. Indeed,
the humanities without
STEM define economic
stagnation, and STEM without the humanities could precipitate social
disaster.
By
perspective, half a century
ago the British physicist and novelist C.P. Snow delivered
a controversial lecture
at Cambridge University called �The Two Cultures� in which he lamented the gulf between
scientists and a group he described as �literary intellectuals.� He cited several
examples: �scientists ignorant
of the cultural insights of Dickens and humanists ignorant
of the second law of thermodynamics.
At the risk of exaggeration, the gulf Snow depicted might be described
as illiteracy matching
innumeracy in the citadels of academia. But however defined,
Snow held that the breakdown of communication between
the sciences and the humanities hindered an
understanding of social challenges.� Assuming some legitimacy to this contention,
what is the situation five decades later?
In many ways the science-humanities distinction is more complicated today as advances
in physics, biology
and chemistry have become more complex.
Nonetheless, from a methodological perspective, the technological revolution that began with the development of the point-contact transistor and thence the digital
electronic computer, the integrated circuit,
and the microprocessor has found the humanities and sciences sharing
a growing portion
of common ground.
Just as computers allow mathematical computations applied to scientific inquiry to be made at blinding speed,
so the digitization of images
of a myriad of pictures
and objects and billions of words harvested from books, journals, and documents enables
the application of scientific methods
to vast amounts of cultural
and social science
data. Indeed, the new research
�tools� that STEM has wrought
have spawned a new academic
field called the digital humanities
which is particularly well suited for cross-disciplinary, cross-institution, and cross-border collaborations.
Based on research
pioneered in educational institutions
across the country, commercial firms like Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Apple, and Google
have been given the opportunity to advance new kinds of consumer products
and services. As a consequence, the revolutionary hallmark
of our times is the emergence of a New Digital Class, characterized less by occupation, birth, geographic location, and the science-humanities divide than by an individual�s degree of curiosity, diligence and access to digital
technology.
The important division in the new communications age is no longer the one between science and the humanities. It is in the first instance the growing gulf between those
who have crossed
the digital divide
and those who by choice, lack of access or capacity have not; and in the second, between
those who seek information from diverse sources
with an open-minded perspective and those who choose to rely on single-dimensioned purveyors
of views.
Since the Enlightenment, the issue of equality has been viewed
as a political ideal tied to democratic institutions and governmental policies of the moment. But in the modern world access to knowledge is becoming as central to advancing social
equality and opportunity across the globe as access
to the ballot box has proven to be the key to advancing political
rights.
The question
of whether a tweeting world will cause greater understanding and social integration at the community and international level or lead to greater intolerance and social splintering is yet to be resolved. What is clear
is that few revolutions in history
can match the democratizing consequences for individual learning
of the development and spread
of digital communication devices and the software capacities that fuel use of such hardware.
If a wide-eyed creature
sitting on the moon this last century
were assigned the task of assessing what constructive happenings had occurred on earth, that creature would have to conclude that the most impressive achievements of man in this period of world wars, religious and ideological strife clearly has been
in the STEM disciplines. Conversely, these advances have also added
to the vulnerability of humankind.
After all, at the same time that the capacity to compute and correlate, heal the sick, communicate to the most distant corners
of civilization, and travel around the earth, even into outer space, has leaped forward, the power to destroy and do harm has also grown exponentially. For the first
time in man�s existence, the capacity exists not only to wage war but to destroy
life on the planet.
As Einstein so presciently warned,
splitting the atom has changed everything except
our way of thinking.
Vulnerability is now the state of man, everywhere.
Civilization is jeopardized at one end by weapons
of mass destruction and at the other by hatred-driven anarchy. For the first time in history
terrorism has been globalized and asymmetric warfare
computerized. Just as a plot was hatched
against America on 9/11 from a mountainous redoubt halfway around the world,
cyber-attacks may with increasing ease be launched
from distant computer
�silos.� In less than a decade the United States
has become
vulnerable to foreign powers or galvanized groups capable of wreaking havoc on our economic infrastructure � everything from the electric
grid to the financial system � without
a shot being fired.
The national
security dilemma of our age is that the more advanced and open a society, the more exposed
it is to anarchistic acts.
Man�s fate has never been more interwoven with unprecedented security
challenges. Optimism can only be presumed if STEM advances
are coupled with greater humanistic understanding. Calculus and physics require
a linkage to history
and ethics. Together, STEM and the humanities flourish; apart society is jeopardized.
Despite differences that may exist between the capacity of scientists to explore the unknown in nature and the ability
of scholars in the liberal arts to address life�s enduring
questions, the sciences
cannot ignore the humanities any more than the humanities can ignore what science has discovered.
What may be counter-intuitive to many is that the challenges in the humanities
exceed those of STEM. This is the case because
grasping
and sharing
the art of human understanding is vastly more difficult than mastering the technology embedded
in smart phones
and the most powerful computers.
Love and hate,
beauty and fear are more complex than high speed algorithms and non-Euclidean geometry.
There is every reason
to honor the sciences and support investigations into the unknown, be they related to the beginnings of the universe
or the extending
of human life. Yet, in the end, dark matter and dark energy may be easier to understand in the physical
sciences than dark motives are in the social arena. The Higgs
boson has been identified and, perhaps by extrapolation, found,
but peace on earth
has not been secured.
The bottom
line case for humanities studies
is thus a risk management one: the necessity of developing the wisdom, policies
and tools to avoid the apocalypse. The only credible
methodology to secure
and ennoble life on
the planet is to build
habits and techniques of conflict resolution that do not involve recourse to violence
at every level
of social interaction.
Accordingly, stewards of national power � and in a democracy that means all of us � have no choice except to strive to understand more fully the human
condition. Livelihoods and life itself demands attention
to wide horizons. As
important as controversies of the day, politics
of the moment, may be, they
are generally surface
concerns. To understand problems on the surface it is
necessary to know the depths
below: the history
and culture of one�s own society and that of others, even the most distant.
Just as we need an infrastructure of roads and bridges, we need an infrastructure of ideas.
�
Yet, there appears
to be a gathering sentiment, symbolized by recent initiatives in the political arena, that higher
education should move away from an emphasis
on the liberal arts to teaching discrete
job skills, especially as related to STEM disciplines. The assumption that jobs are the number
one issue for most Americans
is valid; a conclusion, however,
that the humanities are not central to job creation is mistaken. Indeed,
such a conclusion could too easily lead to policy
prescriptions that undercut
American competiveness and the national
interest itself.
A myth of our times is that the humanities are good for the soul but irrelevant to the pocket
book. Actually they are central
to the creation of jobs and long- term American
competitiveness.
Testifying
before Congress two years ago, Hunter Rawlings,
a former president of the University of Iowa and the current president of the Association of American Universities, noted that a survey of employers by his association
indicated that 73% rejected the trend towards
narrow technical training
and wanted colleges
and universities to place more emphasis on critical thinking and analytic
reasoning.
It is true that many jobs such as in the building
trades are skill-centric, but job creation
itself requires leadership which in turn requires an understanding of community and the world. �Change
and its acceleration characterize the times. With each passing year jobs evolve,
become more sophisticated. Training for one skill set may be of little
assistance for another.
On the other hand, studies that stimulate
the imagination and nourish capacities to analyze and think outside the box are well-suited to the challenges of change. They make coping with the unprecedented a manageable endeavor.
What
is needed in a world
in flux is a new understanding of the meaning
of the basics in education. Traditionally, the basics
are about the three �R�s,�
which here in Iowa are sometimes understood to be ��readin, �ritin,
and �restlin.� However defined,
they are critical. Nonetheless, they are insufficient. What are also needed are studies that provide perspective on our times
and foster citizen understanding of their own communities, other
cultures, and the creative process.
To
understand and compete
in the world we need a fourth
�R,� what for lack of a precise
moniker might be described as �reality� � which includes
not only relevant
knowledge of the world near and far but the imaginative capacity
to creatively apply knowledge to discrete issues and undertakings.
Rote thinking
is the standard of the status quo. Stimulating the imagination is the key to the future. As Einstein once observed, imagination is more important than knowledge, and his life is proof of the imaginative mind trumping skill-
set knowledge. In a math-based science, Einstein was never considered a first tier mathematician. But he was an unparalleled imaginer. In pondering self- initiated thought
problems he probed the meaning
of the universe.
As individuals each of us tries to make sense of our own odysseys
through life. Our universe is small in relation not only to the solar
system but the communities in which we live. But wherever we might be, we are affected by global events,
whether related to the challenges of national security
or the global hiring hall.
In this insecure
geo-political environment, a deeper comprehension of the fourth �R� (reality)
has never been more important.
What better way is there to apply perspective to our times than to study the history of prior times?
What better way is there
to learn to write well
than to read great literature? What better way is there to think critically and understand American
traditions than to parse the thinking of Enlightenment philosophers like Locke and Montesquieu and review their influence on our founders
and our Constitutional system? And, do not art making
and art appreciation instill a sense for the creative
process?
The principal
rationale for humanities studies is that they enhance
the meaning of life and embellish what it means to be human. This rationale is so powerful that it too easily
obscures the utilitarian case which is also compelling.
How
can we compete in our own markets
if we don�t understand our own culture and its enormous variety
of subcultures, or abroad if we don�t understand foreign
languages, histories and traditions?
How
can we understand our own era and the place
of our own values if we don�t
study other faith systems � Buddhism, Hinduism,
Islam and the relationship of diverse religions
to the Old and New Testaments?
How
can we contain prejudice and counter forces
of hatred if we don�t come to know more about each other?
How
can we undergird our civic institutions and precipitate sound
public policy if we don�t understand the rights and responsibilities of citizenship?
The
dilemma of today�s
politics is that America has an abundance of leadership in commerce, science,
the arts and every facet of the academy but the political system is hamstrung by ideological cleavages. President Eisenhower warned years ago of a military-industrial complex.
Today my worry is more about
the rise of a �political-ideological complex.�
Ideologues use politicians as pawns while politicians use ideologues,
especially those with deep pockets, as enablers
of personal ambition.
This reinforcing set of mutual
interests has little to do with the common good and much to do with the break-down in civility in public life.
Yet seldom
has it been more important
for individuals in the public arena to appeal to the better
angels rather than the baser instincts of the body politic. Whether the issues are social or economic,
domestic or international, the temptation to appeal to the darker side of human nature must be avoided. The stakes are too high. The health of nations
is directly related
to the temperance of statecraft, to whether public
officials inspire hope or manipulate fear.
It
is also related to the depth of knowledge applied
to decision-making. In reviewing, for example, our decision to go to war in Iraq it is extraordinary how inadequate attention
to cultural issues
may have cost lives and reputations as well as money. Yes, there was an �intelligence� failure related to misjudgments about alleged Iraqi complicity in 9/11 and the status of Iraq�s
nuclear and bio- chemical weapons
capacities. But the greatest �intelligence� failure was our
lack of understanding of the region
itself.
Despite having gone to war in the Persian
Gulf a decade earlier, Congress
and Executive branch
policy makers understood little of the Sunni/Shi�a divide
when 9/11 hit. Likewise, despite
the French experience in Algeria and the British
and Russian in Afghanistan, we had little
comprehension of the depth of Islamic antipathy
to foreign intervention. And, despite the tactics of a Daniel
Boone- style patriot
named Francis Marion,
the Swamp Fox, who attacked
British garrisons at night during
the Revolutionary War and then vanished in South Carolina
swamps during the day, we had little
sense for the effectiveness of asymmetric warfare.
A skeptic once suggested that the humanities are little more than studies
of flaws in human nature.
Actually they uplift
on the one hand and warn on the other.
The power of a few to commit
acts of societal
destruction and the contrasting capacity
of a few to precipitate uplifting change has grown exponentially in the last century. A race between
these contrasting capacities is gathering momentum.
For the best of our values to prevail,
Americans must awake from historical slumber. A renewed
emphasis on the study of various liberal arts disciplines, especially history,
is vital because
of our unique role in the world and because academic testing
tells us that Americans have more limited
historical and geographic knowledge than virtually any other advanced
society.
To look presciently forward
we have no choice except
to look carefully back.
History has a circular
quality. It tends to repeat,
sometimes rewind. Wisdom, by contrast
is linear. Smart people, parents
tell their children,
learn from their own mistakes.
A really smart person, a corollary might suggest, learns from the mistakes of others. And a sage gleans great truths from the wise as
well as mistaken steps of those who came before.
Every circumstance is, of course,
different than any other. We don�t ever walk in exactly the same way in the same physical
or social environment. People and situations change. Hence it is important to think imaginatively as well as pragmatically and historically. There are many ways to stimulate the imagination, from reading literature to studying and creating
art.� But the lynchpins that most often tie other studies together
are history and story-telling, oral and written.
No disciplines outside
the humanities more effectively allow us to put on the shoes of others in past ages and different
contemporary circumstances.
St. Paul once suggested that we all look through
a glass darkly. Metaphorically, Paul may have made the ultimate case for humility.�
While faith may be absolute,
Paul suggests that man simply
doesn�t have the capacity to know the will of God or apply perfectly the wisdom of His apostles
on earth. An analogous lack of certitude
should be applied
to history. There can be clarity about
certain historical facts
like names and dates but the whys and
wherefores of events
can be elusive. It is no accident
that history can be
more controversial than current events.
Nonetheless, despite the fog that always hovers over memory,
it is clear that the deeper our understanding of the past, the greater
our capacity to cope with the present
and mold the future.
Life of society
and the individual is a continuum. History
may be the story of the dead but it never dies.
It continues to shape who we are and how we think.
Shelley once described poets as unacknowledged legislators. The great 19th Century American poet of the common man, Walt Whitman, went further and implied their authority stretched
beyond traditional political
conceptions.�� Intoxicated with the notion
that poetry could be an antidote to violence, he once wrote that his greatest dream was for �an internationality of poems and poets binding
the lands of the earth closer than all treaties
and diplomacy��
A third of the way around the world from this great heartland academic center, Dostoevsky affirmed something similar:
�Beauty,� he said, �will save the world.�
A third of the way around the world in the opposite
direction, Confucius suggested
that �when music
and courtesy are better understood and appreciated, there will be no war.�
All of this sounds
rather na�ve but there are few people
in the political realm who ever understood the human condition better than Shelley,
Whitman, Dostoevsky and Confucius. Their angle of vision was philosophy and literature. They understood that the thinking
of man must be uplifted. Words and thought
patterns matter. When pieced together
in the logic of works
like Mein Kampf, they may be used to instill hate and divide,
or they may, as in the poetry of Shelley and Whitman, the novels of Dostoevsky and the wisdom
of Confucius, be used to reach
out and unite.
These are our choices.
In making
these choices, care has to be taken to recognize that seldom is there only one proper
path determinable by one individual, one political party or one country.
Whether a person knows a great deal or very little,
caution should be taken about being certain
of very much. To know a lot may be a preferable condition to knowing
little, but the best and the brightest
are not immune from great
mistakes. Imperfect judgment
characterizes the human
condition. That is why humility
is such a valued character trait, and why civility is such an important part of an interconnected world
polity.
Half a century ago, the British
author Lawrence Durrell
wrote a set of novels called the Alexandria Quartet.
Each one was a first person narrative covering the same cluster of minor events between the two world wars in Alexandria, Egypt. An individual may wonder why read about the same happenings four different times?
It ends up that while
the events are the same,
the stories are quite different. One person�s perspective proved to be only a snapshot
of reality. The moral Durrell
implicitly sets forth
is that a clear picture cannot be pieced together
without looking through
the lens of a multiplicity of eyes and experiences. If such is the case in one town in one time frame, doesn�t it take many eyes and many perspectives to develop a bare inkling
of understanding of a moving kaleidoscope of events?
The most meaningful discovery in a liberal
arts education is that everything is related to everything else, although we may not know it at the time.
Wisdom involves the tying together
of threads of learning. The challenge is to
discover and then correlate discoveries, the most important of which relate to
perspective: values, methods
of thinking and doing, rather
than facts.
The insights
provided by humanities disciplines and the judgmental capacity
to think broadly
and correlate cogently
which they inculcate
are not dismissible options
for society. Humanities studies revitalize the human spirit, rev up our productive engines, and lessen
the likelihood of mistake-making in public policy
as well as private life.
In American governance, process is our most important product. We used to instinctively treasure these processes
and trumpet them as a model for
the world. Today many around
the globe see us as running through
a rough patch. In exasperation and more than a little
anger, American citizens
find themselves increasingly using the adjective �dysfunctional� to describe
Washington politics. We have had more difficult
times in our history. Far greater political intransigence, for instance,
was reflected in the decade before the Civil War. Nevertheless, it is jarring
for the public
to see tremors develop in credit markets as budgets are put together in a crisis
manner. There is fair reason at all times for philosophical disagreements to be aired between
the political parties.
But the greater
our problems, the more important it is for the political
establishment to work out
differences in an open and respectful manner.
Loyalty should be to country rather than
party, to Constitutional processes rather than partisan posturing.
At the moment,
America leads the world in almost every
academic field, but a crisis is looming
in the humanities as publicly
supported research has by a 200 to 1 margin become more focused on laboratories than libraries. The key for the future
is to establish a responsible balance that does not need to be defined as equality of public research
spending.� Scientific research,
after all, is substantially more expensive than humanistic inquiries. But a balance of concern
should be sought that recognizes that the humanities and areas of study
included in STEM are intertwined.�
In recent
months arts advocates
have made a thoughtful case that the letter �a� be added to STEM to form the acronym STEAM to underscore the creative impulse
that is freed across culture by the arts. A vivid example
of the tie between the arts and sciences is reflected in a comment
from a prominent 19th Century portrait painter, Daniel Huntington, who wrote of his mentor,
Samuel F.B. Morse: �Professor Morse�s world-wide fame rests � on his invention of the electrical telegraph; but it should be remembered that the qualities
of mind which led to it were developed in the progress
of his art studies.�
According to
his student, every studio
was for Morse �more or less a laboratory.� Similarly, the lives
of 18th
Century inventors like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and the Russian
polymath, Mikhail Lomonosov,
illustrate how the humanities and the sciences
are manifestations of conjoined
creative impulses.
It is sometimes appropriate and helpful to distinguish parts
from the whole. Yet the big picture
in higher education
isn�t about pitting
parts against each other. The challenge today is to strengthen all the parts to make a greater whole.
Both the acronyms STEM and STEAM have merit, but to provide a fuller balance the academic
community might consider
unifying in support
of itself. At the risk of presumption and hyperbole, I would suggest
that �HUMANASTEAM� might be an appropriate rallying concept. It is a conceptualization unlikely
to make a dictionary, or even a t-shirt. Nonetheless, �HUMANASTEAM� advocacy fits the times better than many other labels because there simply is no credible basis for intra-collegiate academic conflict.
I have never
come across a humanist who does not support the sciences, or a
scientist who does not support
the arts and humanities.
There are, however, public figures
who are expressing grave doubts about
the relevance of the
liberal arts, even political science which Aristotle described as the highest
art. How should the academy respond?
I would suggest that policy makers in
government and administrators in the academy might consider the relevance of
the following:
1)� In the wake
of Sputnik the Eisenhower Administration pressed not only for new support for
STEM research but for enhanced foreign language training and support for
international studies programs. The question of whether the time is appropriate
to press new, expanded legislation modeled after elements of the National
Defense Education Act of 1958 is worthy of review. Sputnik underscored the
importance of paying enhanced attention to threats emanating from the Soviet
Union. Today very different challenges symbolized by 9/11 are evident. They
spring from different regions of the world and require responses that must be
informed by complex cultural understanding. Public policy options might be
enhanced by STEM advances but they will be insufficiently thought through
without humanities input.�
2)� It is critical that every American
generation have an educated citizenry and a steady
infusion of talented
individuals prepared for public service.
A number of universities have spawned public
policy schools that are leadership oriented. Universities without such schools
might look at models like Syracuse�s Maxwell
School, Princeton�s Woodrow
Wilson School, the Harvard
Kennedy School, Johns
Hopkins SAIS, the Tufts School of Public Policy, Georgetown�s School of Foreign
Service, Columbia�s School of
International and Public Affairs, the Dole Institute
at Kansas, the LBJ School at Texas,
the Ford School
at Michigan, the La Follette School at Wisconsin, the Evans School
at Washington, the Sanford School at Duke, and the Graham Center
for Public Service
at Florida. Whether called Schools
of Public and International Affairs or Ethics and Public
Policy Centers, institutional undertakings of this nature provide
a mechanism for cross-disciplinary studies
that have relevance
for business, non-profit, and journalism careers
as well as government service. Public
policy schools are especially important
today because of our globalized economy,
because the links between the humanities and national security
issues are so tangible, and because governance
in today�s geo-political circumstance requires high quality, well-educated public servants and an enlightened citizenry.
3)� All academic
approaches are affected
by university and college decision-making on courses required
and majors offered.
Universities might find it helpful
to review whether
to energize the academy with more cross-disciplinary majors, perhaps modeling
on Oxford�s Philosophy,
Politics and Economics (PPE)
program. Harvard, for instance, has a similar option but stamped the major with an inappropriate name (Social Studies); other schools like Northern Arizona
University call a new program
Philosophy, Politics and Law. The university administration was surprised with the enthusiasm of the student
body when the new major was unrolled a year ago. Many
more signed up than
expected. Other approaches might involve other combinations of studies in the humanities, social and natural
sciences: History, Literature and Philosophy, for instance, would in effect
be a modern version of what classics
majors studied about
eras that go back several millennia; Art History,
Comparative Religion and the Classics
might be considered an inspired doubling
down on the humanities; Psychology and Literature might lead future clinical
professionals to discuss
with their patients
lessons from literary
works; and Science, Ethics
and Economics could further combine
humanities and social
science courses with STEM education. Many other academic
combinations could be considered, perhaps
with optional student
input. But for disciplines that have not changed as much as the times,
the case for experimenting with cross-disciplinary �oomph�
would seem compelling. Multi-disciplinary approaches appear to be desirable for students and reflect trends that are increasingly evident
in scholarly research.
Departments don�t have to shutter.
They simply have to coordinate and engage more fully with other academic
disciplines.
4)� International
studies have never mattered more for America and for the world.� Consideration should be given to requiring
all undergraduates and perhaps students in some professional graduate schools
to take a full year multi-disciplinary course in World Cultures. Such a course
could be envisioned to be history-centric but multi-disciplinary. It might
begin, for instance, with an astronomer discussing the 8 billion year history
of our universe and then quickly proceed to review the ancient civilizations of
the Middle East, China, India, Greece and Rome emphasizing classics,
philosophy, comparative religions, and then go through the Middle Ages and the Dark Ages when Muslim
scholarship shined, and then the Enlightenment. A second semester
could begin with the Western
migration to America
and end with modern regional
geo-politics. The history,
politics, literature, philosophy, religion, sociology, archaeology, classics, economics, engineering, education, and science faculties
(speaking especially to the history
of science and technology) could all be involved. Students
given a sampling of cross-disciplinary approaches would have their eyes opened
to fields of interest they would
otherwise never encounter.� This survey
approach could be the most
memorable and formative course they take in their undergraduate years.�
5) �With the Internet, access
to knowledge has been democratized across the planet.
Moocs are suddenly
and rightly in vogue. Yet colleges and universities remain the center
of American education and culture. There
remains no better teaching
method than tutored
interchanges of ideas,
what used to be described as sitting on a log with a mentor. Old-fashioned, labor-intensive teaching matters.
There is a thirst in every corner
of America for quality cultural
programming. This is true in the creative
arts; it is also true in a broad array of academic disciplines. Everybody
in the academy has a role to play. Whether it is a standard university course, community
programming, or classes offered by individual institutions at night and on weekends, it is important that America be brought together
with shared exchanges
of ideas. There is no more effective
antidote to uncivil
behavior than citizen
engagement involving models of civil discourse that feature a wide expression of opinions.� Such engagement is the daily grist of the academy. Centuries past, the enhancement
of citizenship was considered a prime responsibility of educators.� It is even more important today. The academy
has to be more than about itself.�
Education is an enterprise that like all
others has a price tag.� So in this era
of splintered politics and globalized economic competition, the question for
policy makers is straight-forward: should attention to the humanities be
upgraded or allowed to become decreasingly relevant?� In pondering a response it is instructive to consider the �what ifs?�
in the life of a nation. What if there
had been no Vietnam War, no intervention in Iraq,
no maintenance of troops in Saudi Arabia in the wake of the first Gulf War, the presence of which was the cause c�l�bre
of the al-Qaeda plotters who struck the Pentagon and World Trade Center on September 11, 2001? Would America today have a stronger economy,
more security at home, and less
anti-American hostility around
the globe?
We, of course,
have no choice except to plug ahead with policy
options constrained by contemporary events.
But of the many lessons
emerging from this generation of strife, one surely is that cultural
considerations matter, that humanities research
and outreach programs
and, most significantly, curricula in colleges
and universities, are compelling social
investments.
Which brings me to the final �what if?� What if society
allows humanities studies
to fade in significance?
Absent attention to humanities disciplines, is it not likely that America�s capacity to lead the world and manage our own institutions of governance and commerce will diminish?
To fail to study
history and ponder
deeply what it means to be human,
to�� refuse to contemplate the human condition revealed so resplendently in great literature, and to decline
to think through
the sources of our religious
differences and the ethical and philosophical quandaries of the day is to impoverish our potential for making good decisions. Inevitably, we would magnify the misjudgments of our contemporaries and cut ourselves
off from the wisdom of others in the near and ancient
past.
We discount
the role, indeed
the power, of the liberal arts at great cost and
greater risk.
Thank you.
[1] Leach is University of Iowa Chair of Public Affairs and Visiting Professor of Law in the College of Law.