I'm not sure what angers me more about this (thedispatch.com/article/scie... ): its lickspittle author whose first response to fascists coming for the humanities is to abandon them, his startling if unsurprising ignorance of what higher education is for or his innumeracy about college finance. 1/
Well France tried specialised universities after 1968 and guess what? They're going back to the full version now. It's also not great for your rankings it turns out 🏆, assuming you care about that (wild guess: a Yale scientist probably does)
To start with the end: universities charge, at the undergraduate level, one fee for admission and courses, but humanities courses are much less expensive to offer per seat. The "university of science, engineering, and medicine" he proposes would be either shockingly expensive or bankrupt. 2/
Isn't the "university of science, engineering, and medicine" just MIT or Caltech? Yes, both have humanities faculty - very good faculty! - but they graduate a tiny number of majors (SFAIK few or no humanities PhDs). And in medicine there's UCSF and Rockefeller: graduate-only, science-only campuses.
The op-ed and its ideas are just horrifyingly evil - and don't reflect the viewpoints of the people I've known over decades in STEM - but MIT and Caltech don't charge higher tuition than liberal arts campuses like Amherst College or Bowdoin, and neither one is bankrupt (though Trump might fix that).
MIT does charge a lot more than most US university students pay All of the smaller private colleges charge a lot more than is necessary to provide a postsecondary education
Okay, but I think it's fair to compare MIT to other famous small private schools.
Yes, STEM departments often bring in grant money, but grants often don't cover the full cost of research and those departments still end up costing more (especially medicine - research hospitals are *staggeringly* expensive to run). 3/
He acts like the grant funding crisis is a problem the humanities created but Trump could zero out the NEH and NEA tomorrow & not cause more than a ripple in the universities. It is RFK Jr. wrecking the NIH - that's *you* buddy, *your* public communications failure - that is wrecking the place. 4/
He protests to admire the arts and humanities, but evidently doesn't think his students should get to study them. He doesn't collaborate with historians because they have "nothing to contribute" - well, chief, they might warn you not to go on appeasing fascists? 5/
There is something astounding in the unrealized conceited arrogance of a medical researcher, of all things, in an age of vaccine hesitancy and intense public medical skepticism thinking that the humanities have nothing to contribute to public health. 6/
And then there is the boot-licking, unsurprising coming from HxA, an organization for which I once foolishly had hopes, which takes the administration's anti-intellectual agenda purely at face value and concludes that what we need to do is give Trump the Department of the Sudetenland. 7/
I am embarrassed, as someone who has also written for the Dispatch, that this was published at the same place and at the same time annoyed that, it being the start of the semester, I simply don't have time to write a full response. /end
I think right now to answer the question he asks in that paragraph is a resounding "Yes, and also fuck you." Speaking as someone who does cancer research for a living, it's not hard to see the societal value of the humanities, especially for the price tag. You just have to get off your high horse.
Also without a decent humanities foundation for ugrads and grads you end up with all of STEM looking like computer science is now: almost no one understanding how to run a study, especially with human subjects, and mostly in the service of private industry instead of science
You end up with the kind of soulless dipshits like the DOGE boys, who hubristicly destroy all that is good in the world. Wholly incapable of understanding what the purpose is of technological progress. And millions will suffer death and despair because of them. www.thebulwark.com/p/the-boy-ge...
I understand. There was a time when I subscribed to both The Bulwark and the The Dispatch and, uh, now I only subscribe to one.
"If we give up the humanities we will have peace in our time!"
No See Britain. Overwhelmingly single honours degrees. All classes are directly connected to the subject.
given the state of Things in the UK i'm not sure this is the counter-argument you think it is
📌
the fascists are also coming for science
Well yes. And as Niemoller reminded us, you have to oppose them *everywhere*
Like, obviously so!
Medical Science is right new the top of the list, too. There’s a clip going around of RFK Jr saying “And nobody blamed The New York Times for spreading that disinformation that football can cause injuries.” Like, even the existence of CTE is under attack. www.pbs.org/newshour/sho...
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Radiologist 🚩🚩🚩