Dean's Update - November 15, 2021

I recently finished Eric Adler’s The Battle of the Classics: How a Nineteenth-Century Debate Can Save the Humanities Today. It opens with an anecdote from a general education debate that it was Adler’s misfortune to witness. An economics professor announced: :

The fact that English now seems to be a world language . . . greatly reduces the need for a foreign language requirement. Yesterday at Best Buy I saw a device that enables a person to immediately translate their language into a number of different languages, the result of which is then read in the translated language to other people. . . . [N]ot too far in the future . . . we will all carry such devices with us on our travels making communication instantly possible wherever we happen to be.

An angry colleague from the English department “mocked the idea that carrying ‘a hand-held translator’ would help transform . . . students into ‘global citizens’”—an admittedly silly notion. More tellingly for Adler, a French professor cited a New York Times article in defense of language study: “Actually, learning another language makes you smarter. This is not a claim, but rather a fact that has been proven through many scientific studies.”

How multilingualism correlates with cognitive ability and what causal mechanisms explain it are not Adler’s primary concerns. Rather, he wonders, “Why had one of my fellow humanists chosen to justify the value of his life’s work on the basis of a handful of studies conducted by social scientists? . . . Were . . . supposed cognitive benefits the only testaments to the value of studying world languages? Could millennia of Western educational history focused on such subjects be so easily dismissed as outdated and wrongheaded?”

Adler argues that skills claimed of humanities education (mental discipline, critical thinking, democratic citizenship, etc.) are paltry substitutes for the heart of the humanities, which resides in “works of great profundity and insight that engage students’ imaginations . . . [and] provide for the young the most compelling visions of the good, the true, and the beautiful.” That is, the disciplines of art, history, Latin, and philosophy doubtless inculcate skills, at least when well taught and learned, but the same can be said of chemistry, economics, engineering, or math, and perhaps even about the same skills. However, the humanities, “far from merely promoting occupationally desirable skills, provide the young with the opportunity—central to personal and civilizational flourishing—to elevate and enrich their souls.”

For instance, they enrich us by presenting the pathos of Euryalus’ bereft mother at Aeneid 9, with the probing questions her lament raises about the cost of war, the pain of loss, and the dashed dreams of the young. They challenge us with moving portraits of moral excellence, as in the clever Portia’s incomparable speech about the quality of mercy in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. The humanities give us figures from Socrates to Sojourner Truth whose critical questions and lived experience instruct and inspire us. Who isn’t incalculably improved through identification with St. Augustine’s restless longing for a happiness beyond human contrivance?

So yes, the humanities can bring students to read sensitively, think rigorously, write lucidly, and speak eloquently. Yet what the humanities do best of all is illumine the highest possibilities of, well, humanity. Such understanding cannot be neatly translated into skills. That is precisely the point. Wisdom is priceless and marvelously irreducible to marketable job skills. We should therefore boldly commend humanistic works of insight, moral vision, and splendor not merely because they help students make a living, but because they help students have a life. All the more for us whose Christian humanism is guided by the incarnate Word who asked, “For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?”

Please note the following news within our community:

• Two weeks ago, President Linda Livingstone and Provost Nancy Brickhouse proposed, to Board of Regents’ approval, thrilling support for honors education at Baylor. The Regents’ press release affirms “completing the renovation plan for . . . Memorial/Alexander halls in 2023-24” and “creating a new common space for the Honors College as well as completing renovations required to complete a unified home for the college.” I have begun conversations with program directors about preliminary concept plans, and I look forward to wider faculty and staff discussions. Exciting days are ahead of us!
• Last month, we launched an e-newsletter addressed to over 4,000 alumni and friends affiliated with the Honors College. We hope enlarged awareness of the good things underway in our academic community will yield growing pride in the HC, along with stronger affinity and advocacy. Faculty, staff, and campus partners will receive the new alumni newsletter at the beginning of each month. It will sometimes replace the ordinary beginning-of-month Update I send, but mid-month Updates will continue as usual.
• Congratulations to Lenore Wright, associate professor of philosophy and interdisciplinary studies in the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core, on publication of Athena to Barbie: Bodies, Archetypes, and Women’s Search for Self (Fortress, 2021). An inquiry into both cultural categorization and individual self-understanding of womanhood, Lenore’s book explores four archetypes that reflect different, often competing, visions of women, their bodies, and their identities. Reviewers praise its “empowering perspective” and its achievement as “rare and admirable.” Well done, Lenore!
• The Honors College is a co-sponsor of this afternoon’s lecture by Mitri Raheb, author of The Politics of Persecution: Middle Eastern Christians in an Age of Empire (Baylor, 2021). President of Dar al-Kalima University in Bethlehem, Mitri’s book provides a modern history of Christians in the Middle East, with close attention to the geopolitical stakes of Western powers. The lecture will take place from 4:00-5:00 p.m. in Foster 240.
• Emily Clark, director of communications, has put together an easy way to pass along information about noteworthy accomplishments, conversations, events, or projects of our faculty, staff, and students. Look to our Marketing Resources webpage to submit story ideas and access other helpful items.

All the best,

Douglas V. Henry | Dean
Honors College | Baylor University