The New Normal for Humanities: Death by a Thousand Cuts

By Teri Yamada. Warning!  This is yet another sorrowful examination of the shortsighted privileging of STEM and the defunding of the Humanities now occurring across the United States.  It reflects Chris Hedges lament that our universities (certainly not all of them equally) are now in the business of destroying knowledge. This also appears to be the “unintended consequence” of the California State University system since 2011, echoing Governor Brown’s  and the federal government’s  ideology that STEM fields will make California and the U.S. more globally competitive.
Consequently, diverting funds from foreign languages, religious studies, philosophy, and ethnic studies programs, for example, just because these disciplines have never really drawn hundreds of majors each year is now rationalized by a new numbers game of student-customer demand plus class fill rates at my campus in the CSU.  It becomes death by a thousand cuts for the Humanities.   The administrative subtext, always subject to denial, is that Humanities’ disciplines are of low value in our stagnant economy.  Who needs another “worker” with a English, psychology, religious studies, or Chinese language degree?  Why spend money on classes with just 15-25 students in the language disciplines!  Or on departments with under 100 majors?  Or on MA programs in the Humanities? More...