The sciences are often thought to be the main source of innovation, but arguably one of the most important conceptual breakthroughs of the twentieth century was made in the humanities—the invention of the sex/gender distinction. When Simone de Beauvoir wrote “One is not born, but becomes a woman,” she coined the idea that gender is the socially constructed expression of sexual difference. As commonplace as this notion now seems, this was a conceptual revolution that gave feminism a new grounding and justification, inspiring social revolutions for reproductive freedom, gender equality, and rights to gender and sexual expression whose effects continue to reverberate throughout the world. It has even affected the content and conduct of science.
The concept of gender is but one example of how the humanities help us make sense of and at the same time criticize the social world to pave the way for progressive social change. Through narrative, philosophical, and historical methods we come to see ourselves and our cultures through perspectives arising from different historical and cultural times and places, and through the eyes of the Other. In this way, we come to understand ourselves and others better, we learn to empathize with those unlike us, and we can celebrate or at least tolerate our differences. The humanities are thus critical for self-understanding, for living flourishing lives, and for peacefully co-existing in civil, democratic society.
This week the College of Arts & Sciences Advisory Board comes to campus for its semi-annual meeting; our topic is Celebrating the Humanities. I organize these meetings around the five intellectual priorities for the College (see below); previously, we have focused on CAS’s roles in advancing and critiquing the digital revolution and in responding to climate change and enhancing sustainability. I consider the humanities to be an intellectual priority for CAS not just because of their fundamental importance to liberal education, but because they enable our students to lead thoughtful and productive lives; because the humanities support just democratic institutions; because CAS has longstanding strength in scholarship in the humanities; and because the Boston University Center for the Humanities provides a strong foundation for nurturing interdisciplinary humanistic scholarship. Despite a recent falloff in student enrollments in the humanities and public criticism of the usefulness of studying the humanities, they remain a critical part of the BU undergraduate experience and the scholarly mission of the university.
Studying the humanities introduces us to the artistic and cultural treasures of the past and present, as was on display with the Symposium on the Tale of Genji this past fall semester. Studying culture and history also enables us to judge our own society critically, as Prof. Eugenio Menegon shows his students in HI 482 Merchants, Pirates, and the State in Maritime Asia. Taking an ethical and normative approach to the development of technology is crucial to our ability to live peacefully and productively in the future. A yearlong Mellon foundation faculty seminar on Philosophy and Emerging Computational Technologies will examine the ethical, political, and epistemological implications of our rapidly evolving digital world.
Humanities scholarship and creative work is a longstanding strength in CAS and at BU. The first woman in the US to receive a Ph.D., Helen Magill White, studied Greek literature at BU. Nobel Prize-winning authors Derek Walcott, Saul Bellow, and Elie Wiesel taught here, as did Poet Laureates Robert Lowell and Robert Pinsky, who remains on our faculty today. National Book Award winners Ha Jin and Jhumpa Lahiri were both students in the Creative Writing Program, and Ha Jin continues as a professor. The philosophy of personalism was developed by BU Professors Borden Parker Bowne and Edgar Brightman in the early part of the last century, and the great logician and epistemologist Jaakko Hintikka spent the latter part of his career in our philosophy department. Former Dean and William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of Greek Language and Literature Jeffrey Henderson is a renowned classicist, member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the general editor of the Loeb Classical Library, the most important resource for classical literature. CAS also boasts highly ranked programs in the humanities, including English, History, and Philosophy. Finally, in its most recent 2015 Survey of Earned Doctorates, the NSF reports that BU had the ninth most Ph.D. graduates in the humanities in the US. In short, Boston University is a major world center for scholarship in the humanities.
Humanistic scholarship thrives on opportunities for scholars to read and reflect, but also on scholarly interaction across discipline, topic, and genre. The BU Center for the Humanities (BUCH) provides outstanding support for both kinds of activities. With a significant endowment stemming from an early National Endowment for the Humanities challenge grant, it supports faculty and graduate student research and scholarship, hosts regular faculty seminars, and organizes interdisciplinary conferences. The director of the BUCH, Professor of English Susan Mizruchi, plans to take on topics of broad public interest, such as the opioid crisis, bringing humanistic research to new and broader audiences beyond BU. Through the BUCH, we can make the scholarly and creative work of our humanists even more prominent. And through our support for the humanities, CAS encourages the development of insightful and innovative ways of understanding the world.
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This is the fifth dean’s note in the 2016-17 academic year in which I have discussed five key priorities that will define the future of the Arts & Sciences at BU. These priorities inform our strategy for growth and development of faculty, degree programs, research collaborations, and fundraising. They recognize existing faculty strengths and respond to global challenges and opportunities, as well as student interest. Taken together, these priorities offer opportunities for faculty and departments to build on collective strengths in ways that best fit their disciplinary assets, but encourage interdisciplinary discovery. These priorities are:
- Embracing the evolving powers of data analytics and infusing the disciplines of the college—from the humanities to the natural sciences—with the opportunities presented by data science.
- Enabling BU to play an important part in humankind’s efforts to understand, mitigate, and adjust to climate change and create sustainable ways of life.
- Understanding the roots of inequality and the requirements of justice, and embracing our special role as educators in creating social mobility by increasing the accessibility of a BU education for talented students regardless of family income.
- Accelerating our strong neuroscience programs so that we can map the brain to better understand the neural bases of behavior and disease.
- Renewing our support for the humanities as a crucial component of a liberal education and critical perspective on our technological age.