There is much in the air this year about the place of the humanities at Stanford and about the optimal place of the humanities in an undergraduate education. First, there is no gainsaying that despite its nationally recognized quality, and despite real sympathy for it on the part of many non-humanist colleagues, the humanities faculty is not at the center of Stanford’s life — far from it. Enrollments have been declining for decades, and we humanists are sometimes taken to task by the University leadership for failing to counter this trend — the expression of a nation-wide trend in a university that is furthermore situated in the holy land of technology, Silicon Valley.
Apr 26
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