As we’ve reported before, the Humanities are currently in the doldrums of academia. A number of Humanities teachers are now trying to save the field but as Bernie Reeves writes at National Review, things could be going better.

Humanities Report Misses Mark

The alarming statistic that only 7.6% of college graduates in 2010 majored in the humanities, or that Harvard’s percentage of liberal arts degree holders has plummeted from 36% to 20% , served as a tocsin to muster a committee of  54 luminaries under the banner of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences to “study” the crisis. (Click here for Jane Shaw’s insightful description of the committee’s work.)

Their battle plan, code-named “The Heart of the Matter,” appears to be all heart and no matter. At least that is the impression gleaned from attending one of the dog and pony shows featuring committee members traveling the college circuit to enlist academic support. Their goal is to deploy “Master” teachers to “stem” the tide, pun intended, against the tsunami washing over the academy by the explosion of STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

One such event, hosted by North Carolina State University, featured committee members General Karl W. Eikenberry, former ambassador to Afghanistan (2009-11), and co-chair of the Heart of the Matter quango Richard Brodhead, president of Duke University – the same Richard Brodhead who abandoned the values of his humanities background and sense of justice in condemning his own students at Duke by supporting the word of a “sex worker” who claimed lacrosse team members sexually assaulted her.

The question hangs in the air: Why choose as co-chair of a humanities rescue mission a man who committed treason against the very values the humanities teach?

General Eikenberry alluded to boots on the ground applications of the values of the liberal arts. And panelist Tom Ross, president of the UNC system, cited how his own liberal arts degree was useful in succeeding in three areas of his professional life he could not have predicted he would pursue.