Shots In The Dark

A theme of Bombardieri's article is that the humanists at Harvard feel slighted by Summers' emphasis on the sciences. It's a fair point: Summers clearly does consider the sciences more important to the university's future, both financial and intellectual, than are the humanities. He doesn't say that explicitly, but every action he takes suggests it, and his manifest lack of enthusiasm for the humanities reinforces the impression.

But if the humanists are on the defensive, they may have only themselves to blame. They do not make their case well. And as we all know, much of their work during the past decade or so has been so insular, so out of touch, and so unconcerned with connecting scholarship to the world outside their field, it's easy to see why Summers might consider the humanities largely irrelevant to the greater scheme of things.

I know this from my own experience in graduate school at Harvard, where I would read what some of my peers and professors were working on, and think, my God, how could anyone possibly care about this stuff? You'd need a translator just to get past the jargon, and even then, what was the point? Why would anyone care except fifty other people in the field?

So Summers has picked a fight. It's time for the humanists to respond. They need to a) reconsider their own project, their own raison d'etre, and b) make the case for the urgency, vitality and relevance of the humanities to the modern university. Take the fight back to Summers. Or, as he would say, prove him wrong.

It's time for the humanists to stand up for themselves and say, this is why we are important. This is why we matter.

If they can't do that, maybe Summers has a point. If they can, maybe he'll take note.