This is a very special episode! It was recorded with my John Jay colleagues before a live audience. It came about as an acknowledgement of this podcast passing the 100 episode mark and thanks to Dan Stageman, Director of Research at the Office for the Advancement of Research (OAR), Remmy Bahati, Research Communications Specialist at OAR, and the A/V team who recorded the event which you can listen to or watch on OAR’s YouTube channel.
We addressed the importance of the humanities in the face of a lot of pessimistic press about their relevance and value in recent years. The panel consisted of David Munns (History), Allison Pease (Provost & Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs), Belinda Rincon (Latin American and Latinx Studies and English), and Dean Ringel (History). The audience participated and enriched the conversation even more.
In a bonus segment, I had a separate conversation with Dr. Charissa Che, Assistant professor in the English department at John Jay. She talks about participating in the National Humanities Alliance (NHA) Advocacy Day and shares her clear-eyed and eloquent take on the state of the humanities.
Remember, as my college president said in 1983, “Poets make good doctors.”
Discussed/related/bonus:
- Ringel Humanities Scholars
- John Jay College Social Justice Landmark Cases eReader
- CUNY Chancellor Felix V. Matos Rodriguez, “The humanities are vital to a CUNY education”
- American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Bachelor’s Degrees in the Humanities
- Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon, Permanent Crisis: The Humanities in a Disenchanted Age (University of Chicago Press, 2021, with a good summary here)
- Nathan Heller, “The End of the English Major” (The New Yorker, Feb. 2023)
- National Humanities Alliance
- National Council of Teachers of English
- Purdue U Cornerstone Program
- U Iowa Humanities for the Public Good
Listen to Episode 110 now! (Apple Podcasts)
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