Science without humanity, knowledge without character

One of my first and most-read posts. Still relevant?

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

T. S. Eliot, The Rock

Contradicting Chaucer, who thought it sweet, T. S. Eliot called April "the cruellest month." As an Australian academic, I side with Chaucer. April is the most optimistic month in our academic calendar because that is when we hold our graduation ceremonies. Over the years, I have been fortunate to conduct many ceremonies in which I have welcomed scores of proud graduates to the "fellowship of educated men and women." Despite the inevitable déjà vu, I always come away feeling good about the future.

One regular feature of every graduation ceremony is a queue of students of a certain age waiting to receive their doctorates in history, classics, English, philosophy, fine arts and the other subjects collectively known as the humanities. Their stories are similar. After a business career, the public service or one of the professions, they returned to the university to fulfil a life-long desire to study the architecture of ancient Rome, steep themselves in poetry or write a novel. Almost without exception, their focus is the humanities. Not once have I encountered a retiree whose return to university was driven by a passion for accounting, marketing, or business administration. When working life wanes and it comes time to feed the soul, it seems that only the humanities provide the required nutrition.

Despite the enthusiasm they induce, the humanities are in crisis. Humanities academics feel undervalued or, even worse, in danger of being tossed overboard as leaky finances force universities to jettison disciplines to keep afloat. Language departments have been disappearing from universities for years. More recently, classics and philosophy have begun to fade away as well. History remains reasonably robust, but nothing is sacrosanct. At least one Australian university has abandoned English. O tempora! O mores!

The trend is international. In England, the government removed almost all public funding from university humanities departments. Students who want to study classics, languages, or history will have to pay the cost of their self-indulgence. The new universities of Asia specialise almost entirely in science, technology, and business, with tiny offerings in the arts, literature, and philosophy. For-profit universities shun the humanities altogether. 

The perilous state of the humanities has spawned a plethora of worthy books lamenting their decline. There are now so many such books that "academic declinism" has become a literary genre of its own. Amazon may soon offer an end-of-the-university-as-we-know-it box set. (E-books, no doubt.)

These books chart the symptoms of decay: fewer humanities courses, low paying jobs, and generations of students leaving university never having read any of the great books that define our civilisation. 

The leitmotif of the academic declinism literature is money. Specifically, the impetus to make money, which has elevated subjects with immediate financial returns such as commerce over less bankable subjects such as the humanities. 

In Saving Higher Education in the Age of Money, James Engell and Anthony Dangerfield claim that the traditional role of money in universities has been inverted. Universities once sought money to teach classes and conduct research, but this relationship has now been turned upside down. Today's universities teach and conduct research to make money. Instead of a means to achieve an end, making money is now the primary goal. Students and their families have followed the trend. They no longer shop around for the best education their money can buy. Instead, they seek the education that will bring them the most money. Not surprisingly, universities have begun measuring their success by the income of their graduates.  

Education wasn't always about money. From its ancient origins until recently, academics defined their mission in moral terms. Following Plato, they believed that education makes good people, and good people act nobly. In the last century, the decline in religion and the widespread acceptance of moral relativism, even idiot nihilism, forced universities to abandon their moral aims—building character, inculcating ethical values, and transmitting culture. Having lost their time-honoured purposes, universities looked for a replacement. Not surprisingly, the one they found reflects the primary concern of modern society—making money. 

To defend themselves, supporters of the humanities have taken to arguing that economic impact is not limited to the sciences, engineering, and medicine—the humanities make money too. Take Shakespeare, for example. The Bard is the epitome of a "creative industry.” Tourists flock to Stratford-upon-Avon, spending up big in the local hotels, bars, and souvenir shops. Shakespeare's plays are performed live or in cinema versions before large audiences. Copies of his sonnets continue to rake in millions, and even the wine sold during the interval at the Globe theatre brings in loads of money. All true. There is only one problem. Shakespeare's value has nothing to do with any of this. I know it has been said before, but it bears repeating; we seem to know the price of everything and the value of nothing. 

I am not against getting rich. As screen siren, Mae West once said: "I've been rich, and I've been poor and believe me, honey, rich is better." As a former vice-chancellor, I know as well as anyone that money is necessary for universities to achieve their goals. ("No margin, no mission".) But surely, the first step is to have goals. Otherwise, universities become institutions with means but no ends.   

What should the mission of a university be?   

In her 2010 book, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, Martha Nussbaum argues that the mission of a university is, or should be, to prepare students for democratic citizenship. Democracy makes severe demands on its citizens. Rather than simply defer to authority, people need to know how to weigh the evidence and balance arguments for themselves. If done correctly—using logic and relying on evidence—the opportunity to argue and debate at university can enhance mutual respect. Students learn that those who hold different views from theirs are not necessarily evil or stupid. 

Nussbaum views developing empathy as one of the most important goals of higher education. Seeing the world through others' eyes, envisaging distant times and remote places, are part of what Nussbaum calls the "sympathetic imagination"—the frame of mind that allows us to feel in touch with "lives at a distance". Nussbaum's description of the mission of the university is also a vigorous defence of the humanities. Students learn about other times and places from history, learn logic from philosophy, and learn how to express themselves clearly by studying English. 

Thus, for Nussbaum, the mission of a university is inextricably entwined with the humanities. 

Alas, in a censorious age of cancelling, shaming, and "safe" spaces, many universities are rapidly retreating from Nussbaum's vision. Several Australian universities rejected generous philanthropic grants to teach the humanities because the foundation offering the grants had "Western Civilisation" in its name. The “woke" students and academics who persuaded their universities to reject the foundation’s funds inflicted more damage on the humanities than even the most benighted philistines outside the academy. 

Political correctness and postmodernism have made academics wary of judging some books, thoughts and ideas to be more important or, God forbid, better than others. Yet, as citizens in a democracy, graduates will constantly be required to make judgements—on juries, for example, and every time they vote. The role of higher education is not to tell students what view to take but to teach them how to gather facts, analyse arguments and reach their own conclusions. 

In a supposedly secular age, souls loom large in the literature of academic declinism. (See The Lost Soul of Higher Education by Ellen Schrecker and Harry R. Lewis's Excellence Without a Soul). I don't think I have ever heard any of my academic colleagues use the word soul, at least not in connection with the university. Yet "soul" is precisely the right word. Our universities have made a Faustian bargain. Like the scholar in Goethe's play, they have traded their souls, and such transactions rarely turn out to be win-win propositions. 

Fortunately, the fight for the soul of the university is not over. In early November, a high powered group of academics and public figures (including a former President of Harvard University) announced the creation of a new university in Austin, Texas.  According to the incoming president, Pano Kanelos, the new University of Austin will address the “gaping chasm between the promise and the reality of higher education.” Instead of a safe space in which students are protected from challenging ideas, the new university will provide “an education rooted in the pursuit of truth.” The new institution, which will be devoted to enhancing human flourishing, has already had thousands of inquiries from prospective students and academics.

This intense interest is a good sign. Job skills are essential to life, and so is money. Still, to paraphrase John Ruskin, the highest reward for university education should not be what graduates get for it but what kind of people they become by it.

Gandhi warned us to be on guard against science without humanity; politics without principle; knowledge without character; wealth without work; commerce without morality; pleasure without conscience; and worship without sacrifice. He may not have intended it, but he was making the case for the humanities. It's great to see at least some academics heeding his advice.

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