I gave a plenary address by this title at last week’s American Democracy Project/The Democracy Commitment conference in Denver. I repeated a lot of what I had said in a North Carolina speech in February, but I updated and reframed that talk somewhat. Also, the questions from the floor were very good. The audio is here, and it includes the Q&A. My written text follows below the fold.
(Denver) I am here for the Association of American State Colleges and Universities’ annual ADP/TDC National Meeting. “ADP” stands for the American Democracy Project, which is a robust consortium of state colleges and universities committed to their civic mission. “TDC” is The Democracy Commitment, a parallel consortium of community colleges. I have attended this conference before and look forward to meeting many committed educators from colleges and universities. The institutions gathered here serve first-generation college students, part-time students, older students, and people who are paying their way through school. The colleges and universities are deeply rooted in their geographical communities, drawing their students, faculty, and staff locally. Because of the strength of the ADP and TDC as networks and the demographics of the students they engage, the annual conference has also become an important gathering place for people concerned with civic renewal who don’t happen to work in state colleges and universities. I’ll be giving the morning plenary talk today and participating in many sessions and events. The Twitter hashtag is #ADPTDC13.
Shrinking enrollments and subsidies lend the humanities an air of crisis. Several states are considering cutting public support for majors that do not lead directly to jobs. North Carolina governor Pat McCrory discussed that idea on the radio with former NEH director Bill Bennett, who himself holds a philosophy PhD. During the conversation, Bennett “made a joke about gender studies courses at UNC-Chapel Hill. ‘If you want to take gender studies that’s fine, go to a private school and take it … But I don’t want to subsidize that if that’s not going to get someone a job.’” Although gender studies includes a lot of social science, the other departments that would suffer the most from cuts would likely be in the humanities.
This moment is particularly difficult, but the debate about the public value of the humanities is a perennial one. The word “humanist” derives from the informal name for a new kind of tutor who emerged during the Renaissance. Medieval universities had offered a curriculum that strongly emphasized abstract, theoretical, and technical subjects—above all, philosophy and theology. The main purpose was to prepare senior churchmen. Young men interested in secular, public roles—as courtiers (in monarchies) or office-holders (in republics)—sought a different kind of education that was more practical, concrete, and likely to make them persuasive in public. They attended universities and paid private “humanists” to tutor them on the side, or else they simply studied with humanists, whose curricula began to influence the grammar schools and then the universities of Europe.
The original purpose of the humanities, in short, was to prepare young men to be effective public speakers and to have secular public virtues. The mainstay of humanistic education was the study of narrative, both historical and fictional. Humanists also taught philosophy, but they shifted the focus from abstract arguments to characters like Socrates and the literary form of works by authors like Plato, Seneca, Erasmus, and Montaigne.
Shakespeare received a humanistic education in his grammar school, and he nicely summarizes its goals at the beginning of The Taming of the Shrew. Young Lucentio hopes to “deck his fortune with his virtuous deeds”—and to accomplish that, he needs an education. He sets off for the great medieval university of Padua–the first university in all of Europe–where he plans to “plunge … in the deep” by studying philosophy. The form of philosophy that he would encounter at Padua would be scholasticism, the impressively developed and refined offshoot of Aristotle’s thought. He is rather like a young person today who wants to study economics: a difficult, highly technical discipline that promises professional career opportunities and that pretends to explain important general questions. Lucentio’s servant (and perhaps his tutor) Tranio politely suggests that he should mix that diet with some literature and rhetoric:
Mi perdonato, gentle master mine,
I am in all affected as yourself;
Glad that you thus continue your resolve
To suck the sweets of sweet philosophy.
Only, good master, while we do admire
This virtue and this moral discipline,
Let’s be no stoics nor no stocks, I pray;
Or so devote to Aristotle’s cheques
As Ovid be an outcast quite abjured:
Balk logic with acquaintance that you have
And practise rhetoric in your common talk … (I.i)
Although the humanities originated as preparation for public life and “common talk,” in the century after Shakespeare, humanistic scholars became increasingly sophisticated about the texts they taught and the historical contexts in which those texts originated. The original idea was to inspire young men with the examples of heroes from the classical past. But the more that humanistic scholars understood classical civilization, the more remote, complex, and varied it appeared. They pursued the truth with the most sophisticated available research tools, treating their impact on students as secondary. The Battle of the Books that broke out in England around 1700 appeared to be a humorous debate between the “wits” and the “pedants,” but in part it was a conflict between amateur enthusiasts of classical texts and professional classicists. Insofar as the amateur enthusiasts—the “wits”—made a serious case for their side, they argued that the humanities should support public life. The pedants retorted that the amateurs did not really understand the texts they appreciated. (I draw this example and much of my argument from the work of my father, Joseph M. Levine.)
The debate about the public role of the humanities has never been resolved, and perhaps never will be, because there is enduring merit in both sides. But as long as we expect the public to fund the humanities with their taxes, it will be essential to make a persuasive case to voters. That case must somehow honor both rigor and relevance, both scholarly excellence and some kind of “common talk.”
[References: Kevin Kiley, Another Liberal Arts Critic, Inside Hiigher Ed, Jan 30, 2013; Joseph M. Levine, The Battle of the Books: History and Literature in the Augustan Age (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991). See also “Joseph M. Levine,” “the future of classics,” “humanistic versus technical philosophy,” and “the place of social impact in a university.”]
Tufts University has undertaken a strategic planning process, and one important development is a proposed revision of the traditional triad of teaching, research, and service. In the new scheme, “service” would be replaced with “Impact on Society.”
I served on a strategic planning committee devoted to “Impact on Society.” As someone who has advocated service and civic engagement since the 1980s, I welcome the turn to impact, because service is too often an afterthought and fundamentally un-serious. In practice, it means committee work or local volunteering that is disconnected from the academic mission of the university. Service never really counts for much in decisions about admissions and grading, hiring and promotion, or funding. Impact, in contrast, raises serious questions: What have you done for society? How much did it cost? Was the impact welcome? Was it good or bad?
Although I welcome the turn to impact, it does raise difficult questions that are now being debated on our campus. Here is just a sample:
Tufts University has undertaken a strategic planning process. The effort is interactive and collaborative, so no one can fully predict the outcome. But the organizers have released a document called the “Prelude to the Strategic Plan” and they invite comments.
I was one of many people who contributed to this draft by serving on a task force. The idea that most inspires me is the explicit move from the traditional triad of “research,” “teaching,” and “service” (with “service” always relegated to a distant third place) to a new trio of teaching, research, and “impact on society” (see p. 26). Impact implies actual consequences, not just service activities–and hence accountability for results. The new language also breaks down the traditional separation between academic work and service. The best way for a professor to have “impact on society” may be to conduct research and to teach. But if we promise to affect society, we will ask different questions about all our academic work.
Here are some important passages. The PDF provides embedded links after each section for comments.
Active citizenship is a core component of the Tufts culture across all campuses, and among undergraduates, graduate students, staff, faculty, and alumni. With the maturation of Tisch College, and the university-wide emphasis on impact, Tufts is positioned to extend its leadership in these key areas (p. 9).
The university should aggressively pursue multi-method opportunities to comprehensively assess the impact of the university on individuals and society. The results would not only be important in debates about the value of universities, but they would also help the university focus its resources on opportunities that have significant positive returns. … Individuals need to know that active citizenship and impact activities will be applauded, recognized, and rewarded in important ways (p. 9).
Active citizenship is about “knowledge-based ethical and purposeful action in support of, challenge to, or revision of the institutions of civil society.” …Active citizenship is an important part of a curriculum that integrates real world experiences. Students need to understand they are members of a complex social structure which in order to thrive must have contributions from all its members. Tufts has established engagement in this domain as core to its identity and to the experience of its students, faculty and staff (p. 14).
Assessment is a critical component of a Tufts education. … [There is an] opportunity to create comparative information about certain university-wide themes. Active citizenship, for example, is such a theme. Tufts will obviously not oblige all faculty to adopt such aims in their courses or, even if they do so, to do so in the same way, it may nonetheless be of interest to create comparable questions that allow for assessment of courses’ contributions to this area (p. 17).
Tufts should … ensure that the tenure and promotion criteria of all schools explicitly include metrics that capture the value of teaching and learning, research and scholarship and impact on society (p. 18)
To reflect citizenship as a defining feature of Tufts University, evaluation criteria can include the real world impact of research and scholarship. Where appropriate include assessment of the societal impact of the faculty member’s scholarship in addition to the assessment by one’s peers within one’s field (p. 24).
As a privileged seat of learning, contemplation, creativity and exploration, we embrace our public responsibilities of service and leadership. Through this, we are committed to enhancing our ability to have a positive impact on society, and to being accountable for doing so. That positive impact should improve the human condition and quality of life, in a just and equitable manner, while living within the limits of local and global ecosystems (p. 26).
In its Strategic Plan, Tufts will [replace] service with impact on society. Impact will include the previous elements of service, but will extend much farther to include a wide range of individual and institutional active citizenship (p. 26).
Impact is by no means limited to science and technology, but also includes the arts, humanities, and social sciences. … In the humanities and liberal arts, “impact” often takes the form of enriching public dialogue about important issues (pp. 27-8).
Looking ahead, Tufts can encourage the choice of new activities at all levels that plan for positive social impact. This requires that areas of intended institutional active citizenship should be actively communicated and promoted, embedding them as part of the University’s culture (p. 29).
Activities that do emerge or already exist need to be identified, tracked, measured and depending on their impact both internally and externally, and then be either promoted or pruned. Pruning is always difficult. A determination of which activities Tufts should promote or prune requires a comprehensive review of activities, taking into consideration the full range of both impact and cost (p. 29).
In addition to recognizing and rewarding present impact, it is important to invest in the professional development of our faculty, staff, and students, to bring societal impact, where appropriate, into the thinking around performance, promotion, and a holistic education. There are ways in which a standard of excellence as active citizens can be built into the faculty promotion system. (p 29)
Simply measuring practical outcomes does not equate with measuring impact. … How often published work is cited, for instance, is a proxy for its impact. While it can be tempting for the University to assess its impact in easily quantifiable and immediate ways, both this and more nuanced forms of measurement will uniquely distinguish Tufts from its competitors (p. 32).