HUMANITIES CENTER

Founding Director Gregg Lambert, Dean’s Professor of the Humanities, Mellon CNY Humanities Corridor Principal Investigator

Beyond a “Rhetoric of Crisis”:Contemporary Challenges in Strategic

Planning & The Critical Role of Humanities Centers in the 21st Century

Gregg Lambert, Dean’s Professor of Humanities

& Corri Zoli, Ph.D.

Grants & Research Consultant Syracuse University

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Introduction: From “crisis rhetoric” to changed reality Context and Trends in Funding (“Just the Facts”)—Corri Zoli1. Data Collection on Humanities Health and Performance2. Decline in Federal Funding for the Humanities3. Student Participation: Undergraduate and Graduate Humanists4. Current PhD WorkforceThe Political Economy of the Humanities (“From Practice to

Theory”)—Gregg Lambert5. “Crisis?” “What Crisis?”6. The Quagmire of Defining the Humanities7. Redefining Research: The Three Models.8. From Critical Practice to Practical Theory: Framing the New Mission of

a Humanities Center

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AAAS Report, Making the Humanities Count: The Importance of Data (2002) Robert Solow notes: “The humanities community knows deplorably little about what is taught to whom and by whom, how long it takes, where graduates and post-graduates go, what they do when they get there, and how many of them there are, which the sciences have long benefited from...

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1. Lack of national data collection on humanities health and performance (like Science and Engineering Indicators every other year by the NSF)

2. Anti-data bias: Why? Anti-science source in poststructuralist critiques of foundationalism

so that an epistemological ground-clearing exercise became an institutional prescription

An anti-assessment attitude prevents our involvement in an ongoing conversation with our 3 largest stakeholders: educational institutions, the public, and government policy makers.

Institutional elitism – the humanities have often distinguished ourselves in the pursuit of academic elitism – not publicly engaged scholarship with real communities—despite our declining status with respect to scientists and social scientists, and despite our theoretically egalitarian rhetoric.

CONTEXTUAL FACTORS AND INDICATORS

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HUMANITIES INDICATORS PROJECT (2009)

Five Observations:1. There is a severe decline in federal funding for the humanities: 140

million in 2007 vs. NSF 6 billion2. That gap was not made up by private foundations or university-

sponsored research: in 2002 the humanities share of all foundation funding was 2.1%; in 2006 spending on humanities R&D by universities amounted to 0.45% of the amount dedicated to S&E

3. Undergraduate and graduate humanities degrees have declined since the 1980s: amounting to 8% in 2004 of the share of all bachelor’s degrees awarded; 2% of all masters degrees awarded; and 8% of all doctoral degrees awarded, placing the humanities 2nd to last in field rankings (the arts award fewer doctoral degrees)

4. Jobs in humanistic occupations: Total 2.53 million, 2% of all employment in early 2000s

Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED) data shows median years from start of grad school to doctorate award is greater than in all other fields: 9.2 in 1979, 9.7 in 2004

5. SED data show that in 2004 the proportion of humanities Ph.D.’s leaving the university with a job commitment was 56%

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NEH BUDGET ALLOCATION 1996-2007

Fiscal Year Budget Request

Appropriation President Notes

1966 49.187 36.487 Lyndon Johnson 1963-19691967 51.849 33.2581968 39.451 26.6481969 60.425 35.156 Richard Nixon 1969-19741970 43.500 46.009 Richard Nixon 1969-1974 Appropriation exceeds request1971 87.111 74.119 Richard Nixon 1969-19741972 152.965 143.387 Richard Nixon 1969-1974 Watershed: budget doubled1973 188.659 184.605 Richard Nixon 1969-19741974 312.828 221.842 Richard Nixon 1969-19741975 327.881 296.562 Gerald Ford 1974-19771976 310.018 301.000 Gerald Ford 1974-1977 300M+1977 347.644 330.584 Jimmy Carter 1977-19811978 375.681 374.135 Jimmy Carter 1977-19811979 404.311 403.286 Jimmy Carter 1977-1981 Highpoint 400M+1980 367.235 367.235 Jimmy Carter 1977-19811981 337.643 335.554 Ronald Reagan 1981-19891982 177.575 272.755 Ronald Reagan 1981-19891983 194.313 263.632 Ronald Reagan 1981-19891984 217.705 271.875 Ronald Reagan 1981-19891985 235.091 261.327 Ronald Reagan 1981-19891986 231.766 244.052 Ronald Reagan 1981-19891987 224.386 245.771 Ronald Reagan 1981-19891988 216.239 239.321 Ronald Reagan 1981-19891989 228.320 248.748 Ronald Reagan 1981-19891990 236.383 242.028 G.H. Bush 1989-19931991 244.229 251.637 G.H. Bush 1989-19931992 256.059 252.833 G.H. Bush 1989-19931993 260.976 247.519 G.H. Bush 1989-19931994 241.445 241.445 William Clinton 1993-20011995 234.791 227.532 William Clinton 1993-20011996 233.851 141.314 William Clinton 1993-2001 Watershed: budget cut 40%1997 170.826 138.168 William Clinton 1993-20011998 168.206 136.915 William Clinton 1993-20011999 164.571 133.956 William Clinton 1993-20012000 175.610 134.939 William Clinton 1993-20012001 170.751 136.595 William Clinton 1993-20012002 135.040 139.522 G.W. Bush 2001-2009 Appropriation exceeds —not by much2003 139.031 136.886 G.W. Bush 2001-20092004 162.219 144.407 G.W. Bush 2001-20092005 167.226 142.5072006 138.054 140.949 G.W. Bush 2001-20092007 138.191 138.338 G.W. Bush 2001-2009

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The Political Economy of the Humanities

1. Anatomy of a Crisis: Competing Definitions2. The State of the Humanities3. Three models of research4. From Critical Practice to Practical Theory

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?

Crisis? What Crisis?

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The Four Characteristics of a Crisis

Crisis 1. unexpected (i.e., a surprise),2. creates uncertainty, and 3. seen as a threat to important goals. 4. Creative: the need for change. If change is not needed, then

the event is a failure

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New York Times, Feb. 24th 2009

The essence of a humanities education — reading the great literary and philosophical works and coming “to grips with the question of what living is for” — may become “a great luxury that many cannot afford.”

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Rockefeller Commission Report

Through the humanities we reflect on the fundamental question: What does it mean to be human? The humanities offer clues but never a complete answer. They reveal how people have tried to make moral, spiritual, and intellectual sense of a world in which irrationality, despair, loneliness, and death are as conspicuous as birth, friendship, hope, and reason.

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18th Century Definition: David Hume

The same age, which produces great philosophers and politicians, renowned generals and poets, usually abounds with skilful weavers, and ship-carpenters. We cannot reasonably expect, that a piece of woollen cloth will be wrought to perfection in a nation, which is ignorant of astronomy, or where ethics are neglected. The spirit of the age affects all the arts; and the minds of men, being once roused from their lethargy, and put into a fermentation, turn themselves on all sides, and carry improvements into every art and science. Profound ignorance is totally banished, and men enjoy the privilege of rational creatures, to think as well as to act, to cultivate the pleasures of the mind as well as those of the body. The more these refined arts advance, the more sociable men become.

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The Unresolved Problem of “De-Legiitimation” in Humanities

1. Question of whether there has been a “de-funding” of the Humanities & the Arts culturally, or rather, a “de-legitimation” of the “professional” humanities disciplines in Higher Education?

2. Whose “rhetoric” is this anyway? (i.e., does the crisis rhetoric of professional and academic humanities accurately describe the situation in K-12, or in increasingly globalized cultural knowledge and production generally?)

3. Who is the “human” in the “humanities”? (i.e., the subject of the inquiry, the one who wants to know)

4. The Slippery Slope Hypothesis: The import of “French theory” into traditional Liberal Arts education from the 1970’s, carrying particularly “anti-foundational” and “anti-humanist” sentiments, has been viewed by some to precipitate a “broken contract” with the Nation. Critical Theory is a knife that cuts both ways.

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The Critical Role of the Humanities Center in the 21st Century

CAUTION! BEFORE ASSEMBLING – How Not to Define the Humanities “Center” (institutionally, politically, globally)

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The Critical Role of a Humanities Center

Three models of Research: considering humanistic inquiry as having three modes that are not mutually exclusive and maintain a flexible approach that is conditioned by initiative and by user:

• Traditional Disciplinary research—Viewed as pure, disciplinary, homogeneous, expert-led, hierarchical, peer-reviewed, and almost exclusively university-based (i.e., the trickle down theory of use).

• Transdisciplinary research: vs. static inter-disciplinarity, transforms disciplinary frameworks and assumptions in the process of knowledge production (eg. Perpetual Peace, TdMS)

• Publically engaged research or “scholarship in action”: integrating knowledge production with community needs in order to create the capacity to solve increasingly complex problems; introduces user as an active participant in the creation of new research agendas. (eg. Mellon Forum on Public Scholarship)

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The Critical Role of a Humanities Center

The Mission of a Humanities Center is

•to provide shelter disciplinary research in a time of institutional volatility;•To temporarily house new forms of inquiry and new research topics that cannot be readily accommodated in existing disciplinary frameworks or curricula (always keeping the need for new models of assessment in mind;•To actively construct a nexus of connectivity between the local university culture, the surrounding community and local cultural institutions, bridging the divide between creation and analysis in the arts and humanities. • To visibly network the physical location of the Humanities to regional, national, and international nodes in an increasingly global university-world brain, reinforcing the continued importance of conferences and colloquia, even in new digital formats.

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Finally, Collaborating across units, disciplines, Colleges, and institutions is extremely difficult and often subject to the law of entropy

1. Re-thinking fiscal habits and proclaiming the gospel of cost-sharing2. Busting the Myth of External Funding as the Holy Grail, the perfect solution

to the humanities problem of resources. 3. Creating regional and multi-institutional Humanities Corridors to share

resources and talent – undo the compound culture of the university4. Seeking “Radical Inter-Disciplinarity”: Reframing initiatives and proposals to

develop new approaches to familiar issues (i.e., digital humanities) and seek funding from less traditional sources (not NEH, NEA) but from NSF.

5. Never saying “no” to a good idea because of ever-present funding constraints. That is the job of Deans, not Directors.

6. If all else fails, start over from 1.