Written with Michael Brown.

Note to our readers: As we move on to the next phase of our writing partnership, we would like to thank you for joining us this past year at Old School, New School at The Chronicle. We firmly believe that more academics should write in public and use public venues to actively engage ideas and readers. We thank The Chronicle for hosting us and our editor, Jean Tamarin, for her amazing support and enthusiasm for our work. We would especially like to thank Lee Skallerup Bessette, Janni Aragon, Ana Dinescu, Vanessa Vaile, Cathy Davidson, Jason B. Jones, Billie Hara, Jessie Daniels, Alondra Nelson, Melonie Fullick, Steven Schwartz, Robert Herzog and so many others who have helped shape our ideas over the past year through their comments here on the blog, on Twitter, Facebook, and e-mail. We look forward to having you continue with us as we write the book that…

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Written with Michael Brown

Mike: I have to admit that I’m not comfortable saying that there is an anti-intellectual tendency in American life. Intellectuals have always been a minority, and their work has always appealed primarily to specialists. So claiming that some present condition is due in part to such a tendency doesn’t quite get to the most general obstacles to critical thinking, creativity, and the like. Randy Martin’s recent book, Under New Management, provides a slightly less pessimistic account of changes in higher education than what you seem to be saying, though I must admit that I am torn.

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I think we can all agree that higher education is a major social structure of civil society. I would like to think that it follows that it is also an important space for civil discourse. That said, what components are necessary to encourage dialogue rather than silence dissent? The anti-intellectual trend that is deeply embedded in U.S. culture marginalizes and silences academics in society and also silences less moderate academics on our campuses. I am a firm believer in the idea that including all voices in the mix creates stronger and more creative and innovative solutions to the problems we face. However, true inclusion requires respect and compromise—two practices that are sorely missing on campuses and in contemporary society.

Denying the political dimensions of higher education is impossible, on both a practical and theoretical level. Life is political. Life is a series of…

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Written with Michael Brown

Mary: Faculty members and administrators often talk over and around one another. When it comes to discussions about the crisis in the humanities and ultimately, the crisis in higher education, many faculty members take a theoretical approach to the issues. On one level, those arguments are very appealing. But they rarely have the power to translate into practical, on-the-ground changes that can be immediately implemented at our institutions.

Perhaps I am too pragmatic, or perhaps I am just frustrated. I have sat through too many faculty senate meetings and department discussions that debate the finer points of theory and mission without ever coming close to a hint of strategy and implementation. There is a great need for people in our institutions who can translate theoretical ideals into actual practices. Many faculty members are fantastic at espousing…

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Iain Pears calls for a new model for the humanities, telling A.C. Grayling that he and his generation had their opportunity to protect the humanities, and they failed, miserably. Instead of coming together to create a shared vision, they squabbled over course modules, created inhospitable departments filled with petty competition and back-stabbing peer review, and spent their time and energy setting course for their own individual success stories—every tub on its own bottom.

If the purpose of higher education is to create engaged, critical thinkers, then we have failed. If the purpose of higher education is to create economically productive workers, then we have also failed. Can we create a model that simultaneously meets the demands of democracy and capitalism? Or is education, like health care, doomed to sit at the uncomfortable crossroads between our political dreams and our…

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Written with Michael Brown.

Mike: In the debate over the New College of the Humanities, what is often missed is that the so-called attempt to “protect” the humanities is more fundamentally designed to protect other fields from anything that raises questions about the increasingly narrow and short-term ways in which those fields are defined –as essentially oriented to markets in products and jobs. To me, this seems to be what is involved in the most prominent attempts to preserve the humanities by isolating them, and by freeing the other, so-called practical, fields from socially critical reason. So, although I agree that the problem of how to preserve the humanities is important to engage, it is also important to look at the problem of how to protect the market-oriented fields from losing their sense of a connection to society.

Mary: Interestingly enough, the humanities are…

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What is missing from A.C. Grayling’s new venture is education, or rather, an explicit idea about the mission of higher education. His project may be new in the U.K., but it is familiar to anyone who has worked with for-profit institutions of higher education. It is driven by the market and is sensitive to the whims of the market.

From the copy on the Web site, the target audience appears to be parents who want to hold on to 19th-century traditions and conceptions of the “humanities,” while making sure their children learn practical skills in how to lead companies. The intended student audience seems to be those who want to travel and have fun.

As a business venture, this seems like a good enough plan. This group will have rejected the most popular majors in the United States, business and engineering, or perhaps those areas will have rejected them. Most likely these are…

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