The Withering of the Humanities -From the Editor (Issue 7)

Leon G Fine

I was recently invited to give an online talk to a class of high school students in Chicago on future careers in the humanities as part of a series of presentations by a range of professionals with different perspectives on careers. Knowing that whatever I might say to the students would be forgotten within a few minutes, I surprised them by declining to give the talk and said that, instead, I would be inviting them individually to give a 30 second talk to the class on their personal plans and aspirations.  I offered a 2-minute period of silence during which they could gather their thoughts and then, armed with their first names, I invited 8 of them at random to stand up and launch.

They all did very well. By chance they were all females. The outcome was revealing. Almost to a tee, they declared that they would be seeking a university education in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and math. (Medicine could be added to this list). However, most students alluded to an artistic or humanistic side of themselves, some being amateur musicians, artists, writers, etc. All made it clear, however, that such interests would have to be set aside while they pursued their principal career goals.

What could account for this uniformity? Over the past decades the liberal arts and humanities have undergone substantial attrition in institutes of higher learning in the USA in favor of STEM subjects which are viewed as being the formulae for future success. University departments of history, literature, languages and philosophy have either been eliminated or subsumed into broader multidisciplinary consortia.  The principal reason for this has been financial, since institutions of higher learning are heavily dependent on extramural support from the indirect costs generated by research grants, especially in science and medicine. Amounts generated by grants in the humanities are trivial in comparison. So, at least one major factor underlying the avoidance of the humanities by these students could well be the perception that career opportunities in these disciplines must surely have been declining if the universities were neglecting them.

My first instinct was to wonder whether this could all be a phenomenon relatively unique to the USA. For instance, why not see if it is comparable in Israel? After all, Tel Aviv has recently been ranked 4th amongst global cities in the worldwide “start-up” ecosystem. If any country could be moving away from investing in humanities, it would be one in which investments in AI, cybersecurity, life sciences, and deep tech combine to shape the global economy. Since Tel Aviv remains committed to investing in these fields surely this mentality filters down to young people considering their futures in Israel?

Well, sure enough, there are studies which enlighten us.

As recently as 2017 the Israel Council for Higher Education chaired by Professor Yossi Shain, opined: “As the Jewish people, as the people of Israel, as the people of the book and as a leading country, we strive towards excellence in high-tech and the sciences as well as in the humanities: poetry, bible research, history, and language. Over the past decade, however, faculties of humanities have been seriously struggling and we want to turn the trend around and increase the percentage of students [in these fields], restoring these departments to their national position as leading centers of research in Israel and around the world”. As background, the Council noted that the number of students was continually declining at universities and the inconsistency of budgets and needs for research in the university have led to a significant reduction in the number of courses offered. Libraries, collections of books and databases as well as faculty lounges and classrooms were declining, thereby creating a cycle of erosion in the status of the humanities in recent years.

On the positive side, Nitza Davidovich examined the basis for the apparent increasing demand for the humanities in Israel by examining the profiles of high school and university students over the age of 18. Her 2020 study found a strong correlation between prevailing academic attitudes regarding the humanities and motivation by these students to study these subjects. Interestingly, motivation to study the humanities was positively correlated with the values of honesty, helping others, and contribution to the country. The study claimed to challenge the prevailing insignificant status of the humanities which aimed at eliminating them or rendering them irrelevant.

In a 2022 article, Matan Shor claimed that “Israel's bombastic tale of a ‘start-up nation’ has caused it to put more effort into STEM subjects leading to reforms which result in less diversity in the educational system”.  Nearly 30% of current Israeli GDP comes from the high-tech sector, with STEM subjects being an increasing focus of the country’s educational system. Students choose state-of-the-art computer classes, expensive curricula and STEM classes as elective subjects, all of which play into the hands of the high-tech sector “making every child strive for nothing more than to integrate these [subjects] into an adult head”. Literature, history, art, and philosophy have been sidelined. In his view Israel is headed towards a future when calculation and comprehensive computation will be the only ones that children learn. This is, admittedly, an extreme point of view but worthy of attention.

Finally, the influential Israel Academy of Sciences humanities, has weighed in on the disciplines of life sciences and medicine, the exact sciences, the social sciences and the humanities over the past decade. Only 20% of university faculty are in the humanities despite the huge social and economic impact of these disciplines. The Academy concluded that, for several decades, “the humanities in Israel and throughout the world have been subject to an extended crisis manifested in the declining prestige of the humanities fields within the general public and a reduction of attention in these fields in institutions of higher learning in Israel.”

No wonder that the class of students with which I interacted had lost all motivation to explore creative outlets for their nascent interests and love of the arts and humanities. I imagine that Israeli students would have similar biases. 

So, what message did I leave with these students? I advised them to start imagining how to lead “parallel lives” which can embrace both STEM and humanities investments. Don’t discard the latter.  Juggle both sides according to varying priorities throughout life but don’t desert your dedication to the arts and humanities even when the dictates of society seem to suggest that they are dispensable. As I indicated above, trends are changing and increasingly, students and young adults are in fact showing their interest and wishes for broadening offerings in the humanities. Hopefully the institutions of higher learning have been listening.

I think that my students were listening.

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