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January 16, 2008, 04:30 AM ET
It's Their Problem, Not Ours
The latest Chronicle issue has a short piece called “How Can the Humanities Prove Their Worth?” and one short sentence stands out as typifying an unfortunate habit of humanities professors. In reporting on the MLA Convention in Chicago, Richard Byrne wonders why the public doesn’t appreciate the work of professors, and finds that outgoing president Michael Holquist has an answer.
“Mr. Holquist, in his presidential address, argued that people’s unease with language is a key reason that the work of the humanities is so difficult to communicate.”
That’s Byrne’s paraphrase, and if it’s accurate it illustrates well why public un-appreciation is so widespread. In two words, Holquist’s point is condescending and self-exculpating. If there is a problem, he says, it lies within the psyches of laymen —their “unease.” And the humanities professor is here to diagnose it. Note, too, the implicit self-compliment in the term “communicate.” There couldn’t be anything wrong with what humanities professors have done with literature, philosophy . . . No, the misunderstanding comes only from a failure to render it to the man in the street.
Is this the way to win support for the humanities? Think of how the man on the street might respond to that explanation. Ask whether he is “uneasy with language,” and he’ll probably scrunch up his eyes and say, “Huh?” Ask him why he doesn’t much like the work of humanities professors, though, and he might say, “But I do, and I remember an English teacher who taught me . . .” Or, he might agree that he doesn’t like academic humanities work and actually come up with a reasoned argument why.
In either case, a little more respect for public opinion will be more effective than half-baked diagnoses of the public mind.
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