Quoted in a recent New York Times article, the MLA executive director, Rosemary G. Feal, expresses concern about the devaluing of the humanities by legislators. Documenting challenges to humanities funding worldwide, the article also cites Michael Bérubé, a former MLA president, who argues that disputed claims about the decline of humanities enrollments are being used by opponents “to further delegitimize humanities research.”
MLA Cited in Article about Challenges Facing the Humanities
One Comment
Comments are closed.
It would be interesting to note the history of the beginning of this “devaluing.”
My inclination (if I should be the one to do the research), is toward somewhere in the 60s, when the proclamation that God is Dead, emphasized that Man is God. In this way, there was slowly no longer a need for self-reflection, ethics, and moral conscience, but rather the pursuit in life was the now, and “whatever feels good, is right.” Even the word, “feel” has lost its value during that time, because it used to be an abstract, even spiritual meaning. But now, it would take its form in the sensual and the enchanting “feel good” like drugs and orgy.
Those general aspects of the spiritual in humanity began to dwindle, slowly, very slowly, like the lobster in the slowly boiling water, until it has come to this present time, when humanity has begun to see only the value in the pursuit of the concrete,the physical elements of existence, and the self-aggrandizing pursuits, which further their pocketbooks and their stomachs.