Dear Fellow Scholars,
Over the last few years, a discussion has been rising over the role of experts in society. While many apply this view to the debates within the medical community, especially in the aftermath of COVID, this discussion is part of a broader trend within academia. With declining college attendance rates, particularly in the humanities departments, many academics seem bewildered by the lack of regard students and the general public are paying them.
While I cannot speak to every discipline, I can speak to my discipline, English Literature, and as a student, I believe I can provide some valuable perspective on the conversation.
In my discussions with fellow humanities students, I have frequently sensed a deep frustration, even anger, against contemporary academia. In the privacy of lunch meetings, book clubs, and study groups, my classmates consistently lament the scarcity of quality scholarship and the deep disdain with which mainstream academia regularly treats their specialty. This frustration is especially felt by students with ambitions to attend graduate school since they must consider whether the education they will receive at these institutions is worth their time and investment.
The recent scandal with Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, reinforced the frustration many students already experience. The revelation that the president of one of the most prestigious academic institutions in America had resigned over the discovery of over eight counts of plagiarism in her academic work was a painful and infuriating demonstration that higher education no longer represents wisdom, virtue, or even good scholarship.
During my college journey, I have been blessed to study under professors who genuinely love literature, are passionate about sharing that love with their students, and encourage them to pursue and produce high-quality scholarship even as undergraduates. However, not all students of the humanities have been so fortunate.
I remember vividly a story a professor told during a class. During a conference, he met a fellow literature professor who had been teaching for many years and was highly respected in his field. During their conversation, this professor abruptly remarked, “I hate everything I teach.”
Rather startled, my professor asked why.
“Because all these works teach my students to be racist, sexist, and homophobic. They teach them to become fascists.”
Now, bear in mind, he was referring to writers like Dante, Homer, and Shakespeare.
When I heard that story, I suddenly received a new perspective. I vividly pictured myself three years ago, bright-eyed and excited to spend the next four years of my life studying the things I loved. At that moment, I realized the grace I had been given, for if I had gone to another university and studied with a professor like the one in this story, there is a good chance that the part of me that loves literature would have died.
In the modern American university, the greatness of the past is judged by the ever-changing standards of current culture. Beauty is reduced to whatever does not offend modernity’s delicate sensibilities. Wisdom and truth are discovered not in joining great authors in wrestling with the timeless questions of meaning, morality, and destiny but rather in determining whether a text passes the Bechdel test.
According to contemporary instructors, students should read books not to become better, wiser people, or to appreciate their literary quality, or, God forbid, because they like them, but to ferret out the hidden power struggles within the story and condemn them. By worshiping at the altar of diversity, equity, and inclusion, modern scholarship has become a mill, churning out the same dull, predictable arguments ad nauseam and providing no fresh or compelling insight. For example, the amount of ink spilled over a throwaway mention of a plantation in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park compared to the commentaries devoted to the actual story is, frankly, astonishing and disappointing.
So, I want to speak to these instructors directly. You are the reason that public trust in our institutions is declining. You expect us to take your word as gospel simply because of three letters beside your name. You have made it your profession to destroy the things students love, and you are proud of that fact. As a result, fewer students are buying what you are selling. Perhaps it is time to take a long, hard look in the mirror and reevaluate your reasons for teaching in the first place.
I also want to thank the academics and professors who have kept the love of the liberal arts and good scholarship alive. Students need your encouragement and guidance more than ever.
Finally, I want to speak to my fellow literature and humanities majors. I know your frustration, anger, and feeling of helplessness because I share it. And I would like to suggest that maybe it is time to get angry.
I am not talking about the anger that rages and destroys and then vanishes without leaving real change in its wake. I am referring to the anger felt when something good, true, and beautiful is being destroyed. I would encourage you to transform that anger into productive action.
We live in an age where it is easier than ever to make our voices heard. With the general public’s declining regard for the ivory tower, we as students have an unprecedented opportunity to speak up in defense of the disciplines we love, to call for a reevaluation of our modern universities’ underlying philosophies, and to create the high-quality scholarship we want to see.
Such work will be difficult and painful, and, likely, the broader culture will not listen to our words. However, as J.R. R. Tolkien stated in The Lord of the Rings, “It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.”
Change may not occur in our time, but for the sake of future scholars, the present students of the liberal arts must take up this fight.
Because if we do not, who will?
Sincerely,
A Concerned Scholar and Student
