There’s been lots of talk about the Humanities here at College Insurrection lately but for good reason. People are beginning to notice that they’ve changed and that they don’t help students find jobs.

Bernie Reeves of American Thinker offers excellent analysis here.

The Fall of the Humanities

Duke University president Richard Brodhead, who abandoned his own students and took the word of a prostitute before knowing the facts in the infamous Duke Lacrosse case, has served as co- chairman of an allegedly bipartisan group convened by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to investigate the value of the humanities in the college curriculum.

Members of the quango included filmmakers Ken Burns and George Lucas, musicians Yo-Yo Ma and Emmylou Harris, actor John Lithgow and retired Supreme Court justice David Souter — an odd assortment to be called on to interpret academic trends.

Said Brodhead in a news release: “The humanities – languages, literature, history, jurisprudence, philosophy, comparative religion, ethics, history and arts criticism – tell our shared story as a culture and help us appreciate our commonalities and differences. The social sciences – including anthropology, archaeology, economics, political science, sociology and psychology – analyze the lives of individuals and societies, revealing patterns of behavior and interpersonal dynamics.”

Who could disagree? The problem is the courses of study listed by Brodhead fit the description of the Humanities over 50 years ago. Today’s liberal arts/humanities curriculum is dominated by the ascendancy of politically motivated “identity” studies designed by emergent radical scholars in the 1960s as ammunition in the culture wars against Western civilization.

Accompanied by techniques such as “critical theory,” “radical deconstruction,” “multiculturalism” (and its enforcement arm, the politically correct thought police) the underlying strategy has been to denigrate and eradicate the success of the Western canon for its complicity in fostering racism, chauvinism, imperialism (from the British empire to the American empire) and later homophobia. Consequently, students are encouraged to take faux coursework sprinkled in the curriculum: Queer Studies, African and African American Studies; Women and Gender Studies; Culture Studies; Sex Studies; Transgender Studies – none of which was mentioned by Brodhead.