An Interview with Robert Darnton on the Digital Public Library of America

Randall Stephens

"Google demonstrated the possibility of transforming the intellectual riches of our libraries, books lying inert and underused on shelves, into an electronic database that could be tapped by anyone anywhere at any time," wrote Robert Darton several months back in the New York Review of Books. "Why not adapt its formula for success to the public good," he asked, "a digital library composed of virtually all the books in our greatest research libraries available free of charge to the entire citizenry, in fact, to everyone in the world?"

Creating a Digital Public Library of America would be no easy task. Certainly there are major obstacles

to overcome. The legal matters of copyright and what to do about so-called orphan books would be daunting. Cost, as well, would pose a problem. Yet, says Darnton:

If [other] countries can create national digital libraries, why can’t the United States? Because of the cost, some would argue. Far more works exist in English than in Dutch or Japanese, and the Library of Congress alone contains 30 million volumes. Estimates of the cost of digitizing one page vary enormously, from ten cents (the figure cited by Brewster Kahle, who has digitized over a million books for the Internet Archive) to ten dollars, depending on the technology and the required quality. But it should be possible to digitize everything in the Library of Congress for less than Sarkozy’s €750 million—and the cost could be spread out over a decade.

A little over a week ago I sat down with Darnton—award-winning historian, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor at Harvard, and director of the Harvard University Library—to discuss

plans underway for a Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). Sitting in Darnton's office right next to Harvard Square we discussed the nettlesome issues surrounding the DPLA, what the massive on-line collection might offer, and how such a virtual repository could serve the public. In the two videos embedded here Darnton also considers what this proposed library would mean for scholars in the humanities and history in particular.

The project has deep intellectual roots in American soil. In another essay that Darnton wrote for the New York Review, he reflected on the long history of the idea. "The ambition behind this project goes back to the founding of this country," he remarks. "Thomas Jefferson formulated it succinctly: 'Knowledge is the common property of mankind.' He was right—in principle. But in practice, most of humanity has been cut off from the accumulated wisdom of the ages. In Jefferson’s day, only a tiny elite had access to the world of learning. Today, thanks to the Internet, we can open up that world to all of our fellow citizens. We have the technical means to make Jefferson’s dream come true, but do we have the will?" In the video interview Darnton ponders what is possible now that has never been possible before. The dreams of the Founders, spun out of Enlightenment optimism, could, at least in some ways, be realized today.

Few early Americans spelled out a plan for a "publick" Library as did Benjamin Franklin. His ideals of thrift, self-improvement, volunteerism, access, and the public good are apparent in passages like the following from his Autobiography:

At the time I establish'd myself in Pennsylvania, there was not a good bookseller's shop in any of the colonies to the southward of Boston. In New York and Philad'a the printers were indeed stationers; they sold only paper, etc., almanacs, ballads, and a few common school-books. Those who lov'd reading were oblig'd to send for their books from England; the members of the Junto had each a few. We had left the alehouse, where we first met, and hired a room to hold our club in. I propos'd that we should all of us bring our books to that room, where they would not only be ready to consult in our conferences, but become a common benefit, each of us being at liberty to borrow such as he wish'd to read at home. This was accordingly done, and for some time contented us.

Finding the advantage of this little collection, I propos'd to render the benefit from books more common, by commencing a public subscription library. I drew a sketch of the plan and rules that would be necessary, and got a skilful conveyancer, Mr Charles Brockden, to put the whole in form of articles of agreement to be subscribed, by which each subscriber engag'd to pay a certain sum down for the first purchase of books, and an annual contribution for increasing them. So few were the readers at that time in Philadelphia, and the majority of us so poor, that I was not able, with great industry, to find more than fifty persons, mostly young tradesmen, willing to pay down for this purpose forty shillings each, and ten shillings per annum. On this little fund we began. The books were imported; the library was opened one day in the week for lending to the subscribers, on their promissory notes to pay double the value if not duly returned. The institution soon manifested its utility, was imitated by other towns, and in other provinces. The libraries were augmented by donations; reading became fashionable; and our people, having no publick amusements to divert their attention from study, became better acquainted with books, and in a few years were observ'd by strangers to be better instructed and more intelligent than people of the same rank generally are in other countries.

There were critics in Franklin's day and there are critics of the DPLA now. But, it's encouraging that conversations/debates and planning have begun in earnest!

Digital Humanities Roundup

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David H. Rothman, "It's Time for a National Digital-Library System:
But it can't serve only elites," Chronicle of Higher Education, February 24, 2011
President Obama did not use the word "library" in his State of the Union Address, but wittingly or not, he helped the cause by citing digital textbooks as one justification for American business to expand high-speed broadband coverage. The topic is finally gaining attention in the national news media as well. Peter Svensson, an Associated Press writer, recently delved into the problems of e-books in public libraries today and complained that they are divided among thousands of libraries. "Some branch out there might have a spare copy of The Black Swan," he wrote, "yet I'm stuck in the long line of the local library. One national e-book library would be better." The New York Times ran a feature in January headlined "Playing Catch-Up in a Digital Library Race," describing how other countries have already begun: The National Library of Norway is digitizing its entire collection. The National Library of the Netherlands has started an ambitious digitizing project.>>>

Richard J. Alley, "Digital history: New online archive displays vast collections of library's Memphis Room," Commercial Appeal (Memphis), March 3, 2011
If you are interested in a sepia-toned photo of the 1932 graduating class of Central High School or an 1836 letter from William Andusentte of New Orleans to Britton Duke of Germantown regarding cotton prices, you can put on your shoes and button up your coat before heading to the fourth floor of the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library to see them.>>>

"National Digital Newspaper Program: A partnership between the Library & the National Endowment for the Humanities," Library of Congress
The National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress (LC), is a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages. Supported by NEH, this rich digital resource will be developed and permanently maintained at the Library of Congress. An NEH award program will fund the contribution of content from, eventually, all U.S. states and territories.>>>

Josh Hadro, "TRLN Digitization Strategy Advocates Flexible Approach to Intellectual Property Rights of Large Collections," Library Journal, February 24, 2011
Go forth and digitize: so says a recent report from the Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN), which urges libraries to make large-scale special collections available online, even if some question about the copyright status of certain elements remains. The TRLN group—which includes Duke University, North Carolina Central University (NCCU), North Carolina State University (NCSU), and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC)—described this strategy in a recently released document, "The Triangle Research Libraries Network's Intellectual Property Rights Strategy for Digitization of Modern Manuscript Collections and Archival Records Groups" [PDF]. The title may be unwieldy, but the underlying idea is simple and appealing: don't let potentially legitimate but vague copyright concerns overwhelm digitization projects of significant scholarly value.>>>

Olivia Parker, "Print books hold their own over digital media," Telegraph, March 3, 2011
. . . . Print books still look unlikely to go out of fashion in the immediate future however, with both adults and teenagers ranking them ahead of news, comics, e-books and magazines as their preferred media.>>>

Rarely is the Question Asked: Is Our Professors Teaching? Part III

Randall Stephens

Guess what? Many college students do not learn analytical and writing skills during the four years they spend in college. Students don't study. Courses are not demanding. Collaborative learning does not work like professors think or hope it does. . .

Or, so argues a new book, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (University of Chicago Press), by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa. More and more students--more likely parents--are throwing down the cash for college. But the authors ask: "are undergraduates really learning anything once they get there?"

Last week the Chronicle highlighted Academically Adrift and the authors' controversial findings. (David Glenn, "New Book Lays Failure to Learn on Colleges' Doorsteps," Chronicle, January 18, 2011.) Arum and Roksa tracked 2,000 students at 24 four-year colleges. Thirty-six percent of these students who took the Collegiate Learning Assessment essay test showed no significant improvement from their freshman to senior year.

Arum and Roksa certainly have their critics. The study asked too few questions about collaborative learning, say some. Others say that the study, limited in scope, should not challenge the whole undergraduate enterprise.

But, overall, the findings should give us pause. "Mr. Arum and Ms. Roksa don't see any simple remedies for the problems they have identified," writes David Glenn in the Chronicle. "They discovered more variation in CLA-score gains within institutions than across institutions, and they say there are no simple lessons to draw about effective and ineffective colleges." Still, Glenn points out that business and education programs in Texas colleges require that students "take only a small number of writing-intensive courses." The path of least resistance.

Are students today less likely to major in history when the workload is high and the perceived payoff is so low? ("So I'm going to spend all this time reading primary and secondary works just so I can be unemployed after four years of reading, writing, and reading some more?") Five years ago Robert Townsend noted in Perspectives that: "Information from the latest Department of Education (DoE) report (pertaining to the years 1997–98 to 2001–02) suggests that in the competition for students, history lost ground while the total number of undergraduate students at colleges and universities grew quite quickly." I haven't see more recent data, but I can't help but think that there are fewer majors today then there were 20 years ago.

Perhaps history departments could do a better job of emphasizing the portable skills students learn in the major. Why not stress in clear terms that history trains students to think critically and to write clearly? I have my students read Peter Stearns excellent essay, "Why Study History," for this very reason. They learn that history students gain: "The Ability to Assess Evidence. . . . The Ability to Assess Conflicting Interpretations. . . . Experience in Assessing Past Examples of Change." Stearns ably shows that "Work in history also improves basic writing and speaking skills and is directly relevant to many of the analytical requirements in the public and private sectors, where the capacity to identify, assess, and explain trends is essential." I've also had students read Heather's excellent post on this subject from our blog. She noted: "History is the study of how and why things happen. What creates change in human society? What stops it? Why do people act in certain ways? Are there patterns in human behavior? What makes a society successful? . . . . When you study history, you’re not just studying the history of, for example, colonial America. You’ll learn a great deal about the specifics of colonial America in such a class, of course, but you’ll also learn about the role of economics in the establishment of human societies and about how class and racial divisions can either weaken the stability of a government or be used to shore it up."

Sounds like a cure for the "I-learned-little-in-four-years-of-college" blues.

History Job Market Looks Bleak . . . Again

Randall Stephens

There is nothing like ringing in the near year with bad news . . . But, here goes.

The history job market is still bleak. (Not really news to anyone, I suppose. We're used to this. It's like watching the film Groundhog Day.) As it stands right now, the number of jobs listed through the American Historical Association is at a 25-year low.

Scott Jaschik reports at Inside Higher Ed: "The reality of radically differing job markets may be especially clear as 2011 begins with disciplinary associations gathering for job interviews at annual meetings and releasing data on the number of available positions." There will be many sad faces at this year's AHA meeting in Boston. (If you are on the market, and would like to improve your odds, see John Fea's interview advice at the Way of Improvement Leads Home and Claire B. Potter's suggestions at Tenured Radical.)

The number of new history PhDs rose to a 9-year high in 2009. You don't need any training in economic theory to know that there's something wrong with that picture. (Speaking of economics . . . the American Economic Association announced that its job listings have recovered from a 21% dip in 2008.)

Could it get worse? Maybe. The Inside Higher Ed piece draws from Robert Townsend's AHA report on the job market. (You may need to sign in to your AHA account to read this.) Townsend, assistant director of research and publications at the AHA, writes about long-term concerns in the new issue of Perspectives on History:

In addition to the chairs’ general concerns about what lies ahead for hiring in their departments, there are demographic reasons for viewing the coming decade with caution. First, the number of faculty approaching retirement age in the next 10 years is reaching the lowest level in 30 years. Currently, only 40 percent of the full-time faculty in history departments are 20 years or more from the time they earned their degrees.

Townsend wraps up his article with a note of caution. "Most history doctoral students are being trained for an academic job market that is now beset by crises," he observes. "Departments should begin to carefully reflect on the type of training they are providing their students and the number of students they are admitting to their programs."

See these related articles for more:

Eric Kelderman, "Colleges to Confront Deep Cutbacks. In states where new governors pledge no new taxes, higher-education budgets will suffer," Chronicle, January 2, 2011

Christopher Phelps, "A Move Abroad: Travels and Travails," Chronicle, January 2, 2011

Samuel Wren, "Rule Britannia. Being a job candidate in a British faculty search is a curiously different experience," Chronicle, April 10, 2010

Anthony Grafton, "History under Attack," Perspectives on History (January 2011)

Robert B. Townsend, "History under the Hammer: Department Chairs Report Effects of Economic Woes," Perspectives on History (January 2011)

Scott Jaschik, "No Entry," Inside Higher Ed, January 4, 2010

Hannah Fearn, "Shrinking job market sees nearly 70 applicants vie for every graduate job," THE, July 6 2010

So You Want to Go to Graduate School?

Randall Stephens

A big hat tip to Matt Sutton who passed along this hilariously bleak cartoon. It's a conversation between a college student and an English professor. "Humanities is under attack . . . You will begin to question the nature of your own existence."

From John Henry Newman's Era to Our's

Randall Stephens

Today I spoke to students in my civ class about the historic significance of the Pope Benedict's visit to England. (It helped that we had gone over the reformations of the 16th century in previous weeks.) While in England--along with facing the largest protest of a papal visit in history--the Pope beatified John Henry Newman on September 19. Newman achieved fame in the 19th century as one of the most critical thinkers of his age, a leader of the Oxford Movement, and a convert from Anglicanism to Catholicism.

English philosopher and public intellectual Roger Scruton seizes on the moment to write about Newman's views on higher education. Oh how things have declined, laments Scruton in the American Spectator. "What is expected of the student in many courses in the humanities and social sciences is ideological conformity, rather than critical appraisal," he writes, "and censorship has become accepted as a legitimate part of the academic way of life." He ventures into choppy political waters and makes some sweeping indictments of the new American system. Seems overdone to me. Don't think hyper-political correctness is the problem.

Still, Newman's eloquent summary of the mission of the university and his ode to the life of the mind is well worth revisiting.

Excerpt: John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University (reprint: 1852, London, 1899), ix, 101-102.

THE view taken of a University in these Discourses is the following: — That it is a place of teaching universal knowledge. This implies that its object is, on the one hand, intellectual, not moral; and, on the other, that it is the diffusion and extension of knowledge rather than the advancement. If its object were scientific and philosophical discovery, I do not see why a University should have students; if religious training, I do not see how it can be the seat of literature and science.

Such is a University in its essence, and independently of its relation to the Church. But, practically speaking, it cannot fulfil its object duly, such as I have described it, without the Church's assistance; or, to use the theological term, the Church is necessary for its integrity. Not that its main characters are changed by this incorporation: it still has the office of intellectual education; but the Church steadies it in the performance of that office. . . .

It is a great point then to enlarge the range of studies, which a University professes, even for the sake of the students; and, though they cannot pursue every subject which is open to them, they will be the gainers by living among those and under those who represent the whole circle. This I conceive to be the advantage of a seat of universal learning, considered as a place of education. An assemblage of learned men, zealous for their own sciences, and rivals of each other, are brought, by familiar intercourse and for the sake of intellectual peace, to adjust together the claims and relations of their respective subjects of investigation. They learn to respect, to consult, to aid each other. Thus is created a pure and clear atmosphere of thought, which the student also breathes, though in his own case he only pursues a few sciences out of the multitude. He profits by an intellectual tradition, which is independent of particular teachers, which guides him in his choice of subjects, and duly interprets for him those which he chooses. He apprehends the great outlines of knowledge, the principles on which it rests, the scale of its parts, its lights and its shades, its great points and its little, as he otherwise cannot apprehend them. Hence it is that his education is called "Liberal." A habit of mind is formed which lasts through life, of which the attributes are, freedom, equitableness, calmness, moderation, and wisdom; or what in a former Discourse I have ventured to call a philosophical haunt. This then I would assign as the special fruit of the education furnished at a University as contrasted with other places of teaching or modes of teaching. This is the main purpose of a University in its treatment of its students.

Higher Ed Jeremiads

Randall Stephens

Read Christopher Shea's review essay in the NYT: "The End of Tenure?" Quite a few American's outside the academy are mad as hell, and not going to take it anymore. Rumors of pampered academics tooling around their college towns in Maseratis are utterly cartoonish. But, something like that vision dominates popular thinking about the professor as aristocrat. (Anyone know how many, say, history professors actually work at schools with a 2-2 load? I'd bet money they're in the smallish minority.)

Should academics be accountable to the broader public for the writing and teaching that they do? Perhaps something like the UK's Research Assessment Exercise could be in American higher ed's future.

Anyhow, Shea considers several books that offer up nightmare scenarios of privilege or offer some suggestions for reform.

"The higher-ed jeremiads of the last generation came mainly from the right," says Shea. "But this time, it’s the tenured radicals — or at least the tenured liberals — who are leading the charge. [Andrew] Hacker is a longtime contributor to The New York Review of Books and the author of the acclaimed study 'Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal,' while [Mark] Taylor, a religion scholar who recently moved to Columbia from Williams College, has taught courses that Allan Bloom would have gagged on ('Imagologies: Media Philosophy'). And these two books arrive at a time, unlike the early 1990s, when universities are, like many students, backed into a fiscal corner. Taylor writes of walking into a meeting one day and learning that Columbia’s endowment had dropped by 'at least' 30 percent. Simply brushing off calls for reform, however strident and scattershot, may no longer be an option.">>>

"I can't read this book . . . it's long and boring"

Randall Stephens

Are we awash in a rising sea of idiocracy? Or, are things just different today; no better, no worse than yesterday? Is short always sweet? Perhaps anything worth saying can be pared down to 140 characters (twitter) or 160 characters (SMS). I don't believe that. And I think that "pithy" and "tweet" probably shouldn't go in the same sentence.

Still I'm not above assigning portions of a longer book. Maybe students do get less from the whole. I know that some students are paralyzed with fear at the thought of reading a 250-page work of non fiction. It's like asking them to scale a mountain and then paraglide down into a briar patch.

So, I was intrigued by Carlin Romano's sign-of-the-times essay in the August 29th Chronicle: "Will the Book Survive Generation Text?" (It's part of a series of essays on what the future of the profession holds.) He summarizes the work of academic forecasters and doomsayers--Derek Bok, Jennifer Washburn, Frank Donoghue, Mary Burgan, Louis Menand. Romano proposes a funny sort of idea, "extreme academe," to sum up what might take place in our near future. "Extreme academe, as a vision, ups the ante of such concerns. It adds flash and cynicism to mere trepidation," says Romano. "According to it, college students in 2020 will use plastic cards to open the glass security doors installed at each entrance to campus. On special occasions, the sole tenured faculty member at every institution will be wheeled out, like the stuffed remains of Jeremy Bentham at University College London, for receptions."

Romano worries that, "Destructive cultural trends lurk behind the decline of readerly ambition and student stamina. One is the expanding cultural bias in all writerly media toward clipped, hit-friendly brevity—no longer the soul of wit, but metric-driven pith in lieu of wit. Everywhere they turn, but particularly in mainstream, sophisticated venues—where middle-aged fogies desperately seek to stay ahead of the tech curve—young people hear, through the apotheosis of tweets, blog posts, Facebook updates, and sound bites as the core of communication, that short is always smarter and better than long, even though most everyone knows it's usually dumber and worse."

He also takes aim at a kind of cult of "interactivity.": "Another cultural trend propelling the possible death of the whole book as assigned reading is the pressurized hawking of interactivity, brought to us by the same media panderers to limited attention spans. It's no longer acceptable for A to listen to B for more than a few minutes before A gets his or her right to respond."

Not so encouraging. Certainly worth considering as the job market continues to shrink and as the culture of the academy undergoes radical change.

London Calling Librarians

This guest post comes from Dana Goblaskas a former student of mine who works at the MIT library. Dana stuck out to me from the start because of her intellectual curiosity and because she was into pop music history, punk, and indie rock. Pluses in my book. Here she tells of her two-week trip across the water as a participant in University College London’s Librarianship Summer School.

Dana Goblaskas

As a self-proclaimed history nerd and an Anglophile, it’s hard for me to be giddier than when I’m immersed in the tangible history of England. And if I can earn credits toward my degree for that immersion, well, let’s just say the happy dances abound.

Last month, I took part in the inaugural session of University College London’s Librarianship Summer School, co-sponsored by the University of North Carolina’s School of Information and Library Studies. The two-week seminar examined the past, present, and future of Britain’s libraries and the field of librarianship, and featured daily field trips to museums, libraries, and archives throughout the city and beyond. Lectures by librarians, historians, and UCL faculty provided background for what my classmates and I saw during tours, and behind-the-scenes peeks into the workings of such places as the British Library and Bodleian Library at Oxford set our future-librarians’ hearts a-racing.

For the history nerd in me, there was plenty of “past” to learn about and see firsthand. Lectures about medieval manuscripts and eccentric pioneers of cataloging were coupled with glimpses inside Wren’s Library at Trinity College Cambridge (built in 1695), the Natural History Museum, and viewings of treasures like the Domesday Book at the National Archives.

Perhaps even more exciting than getting to drink all that in was seeing how much effort these institutions are presently putting into making their historical collections available to the world. With help from foundations like JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee), many of the places I visited were in the midst of massive digitization, indexing, or retrospective cataloging projects. Inspired by the popularity of the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? TV program, several libraries and archives were focusing on increasing public accessibility to the parts of their collections that could be used for genealogical research.

As for the future of Britain’s libraries, I think they’re heading in the right direction. Facing questions about libraries’ continuing relevance to society head-on, they are adapting to the communities around them and showing that they’re in it for the long run. A new “chain” of libraries called Idea Store is springing up around London, abandoning confusing catalog classifications and offering a wide variety of classes to support continuing education in their neighborhoods. The libraries in the London borough of Haringey recently won a grant that placed free medical clinics and wellness centers alongside their book stacks.

And in addition to focusing on expanding digital content and accessibility, some institutions are appealing to the public to help develop their collections. Projects such as Transcribe Bentham at UCL and Oxford’s First World War Poetry Archive rely on crowd-sourcing to create and identify materials, as well as on social networking tools like Twitter and Flickr to get the word out to wider circles of volunteers.

Coming back down to reality after two weeks spent doing not much more than hanging around inside and gawking at cool old libraries—or cool new libraries—was a little difficult. But coming back with great experiences, thousands of pictures, and a head full of ideas lessened the blow of the transition. And I’m excited by the prospect of so much more incredible content being made widely available. Now I just have to finish my research paper to earn those credits, and I think the happy dances will abound once again.

Cuts in the Humanities -- Sightings

When education budgets get cut, the arts and the humanities are the first to get put on the chopping block.  My son was in band during his school years, and I saw how precarious things were.  Now, it appears that humanities are at stake at higher levels of education.  Humanities is, as Martin Marty notes, a fairly broad category that includes the very things I study -- religion and history.  He notes that University of Chicago professor Martha Nussbaum believes that the current crisis in the humanities is a threat to democracy.  They both make a pretty good case.  Indeed, we can see the problems already in the decreasing understandings of history and religion in our context.  Take a look, offer your thoughts, on Marty's reflections.

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Sightings 5/10/10

Cuts in the Humanities

 

-- Martin E. Marty

“Why Cuts in Humanities Teaching Pose a Threat to Democracy Itself” is the subhead for an article titled “Skills for Life” in the April 30th Times Literary Supplement, authored by the University of Chicago’s (and the world’s) Martha Nussbaum. Such headlines can evoke everything from an “Oh, come now!” to a yawn among those who are not professionals in the Humanities, or those who are oblivious of them, which often seem to be “almost everybody.” And they raise the question: “What does that have to do with ‘public religion’," which we keep in our sights for Sightings? In a world of religion-connected explosions and conflicts, why sit back for a week and take on such a quiet, scholarly subject?

“Humanities” officially belongs in our scope since 1965 when President Johnson signed into law a bill creating the National Endowment for the Humanities, in which Congress listed “literature, history, languages, archaeology, philosophy,” et cetera, including “comparative religion.” We were not all sure what that two-word discipline included, recalling Archbishop William Temple’s quip that “there is no such thing as comparative religion; there are only people who are comparatively religious.” Still, we all snuggled under the tent-roof of the Humanities, seeing religious studies prosper a little bit and religion find some place in public programs nationally and in all fifty states. And now?

“We are in the midst of a crisis of massive proportions and grave global significance. I do not mean the global economic crisis…I mean a crisis that goes largely unnoticed, but is likely to be, in the long run, far more damaging to the future of democratic self-government, a worldwide crisis in education,” which hits the humanities hardest. A crisis worse than the economic one? Again, “Oh, come now, Professor Nussbaum!” Is she crying wolf? I was on the Commission on the Humanities between 1978 and 1980, and got used to seeing the words “Crisis in…” always connected with the noun “the Humanities.” This time is it worse, is it scarier? Nussbaum makes her case.

Some of the crisis is within the Humanities, as critics among the disciplines question the turns some of them have taken toward post-modern nihilism and anti-humanism. But while the professors are fighting among themselves over such, colleges and universities are cutting back hiring, budgets, curricula, and set-priorities in them globally. As Nussbaum shows, much of the higher academic redirection is motivated by societal interest in developing nothing but market-ready professions, to prepare citizenries for soulless if technologically adept and sophisticated cultures. There is a low premium placed on wider and deeper forms of knowledge. Nussbaum: “Knowledge is no guarantee of good behavior, but ignorance is a virtual guarantee of bad behavior.”

Relevant to our subject, she adds: “Responsible citizenship…requires the ability…to appreciate the complexities of the major world religions.” Some Americans talk a good line about such matters, and others find it opportune to dis-appreciate such complexities of all religions but one’s own – attacking one or another of them as “evil” and wicked, from top to bottom, thus promoting ignorance and hatred, which exacerbate conflict. “Today we still maintain that we like democracy and self-governance, and we also think that we like freedom of speech, respect for difference, and understanding of others. We give these values lip service, but we think far too little about what we need to do in order to transmit them to the next generation and ensure their survival.” Time to hug your English teachers or philosophers, and support them, against all odds? Yes.

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com.

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In this month’s Religion and Culture Web Forum, Web Forum editor emeritus Spencer Dew explores the relationship between Jack Kerouac’s religious thought and its expressive practice in the act of writing: “Indeed, his entire oeuvre can be read as an expression of his personal religious stance, a kind of ‘fusion’ of Catholic theology with notions taken from Buddhist philosophy and practice.” Through a close reading of Kerouac’s novella Tristessa, Dew suggests that such a fusion—despite exemplifying Kerouac at his writerly best—leads to a solipsism that is ethically troubling, and likely reflective of Kerouac’s personal and professional shortcomings—especially later in his life. “Devotion to Solipsism: Religious Thought and Practice in Jack Kerouac’s Tristessa,” with invited responses from Benedict Giamo (University of Notre Dame), Nancy Grace (College of Wooster), Sarah Haynes (University of Western Illinois), Kurt Hemmer (Harper College), Amy Hungerford (Yale University), Omar Swartz (University of Colorado, Denver), Matt Theado (Gardner-Webb University), and Eric Ziolkowski (Lafayette College).

http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/index.shtml

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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

What is it Good for?

Randall Stephens

Standards, standards, impact, impact. In recent years historians in the UK have had the Research Assessment Exercise to contend with. (Sorry, your publications with Yea-oh University Press and Oxfort College Press don't pass muster.) Administrators and the public also push for disciplines in the humanities to prove their "usefulness" and "impact."

"As with philosophy," writes Ann Mroz in THE, "it is hard to show history's value beyond an intellectual pursuit. Any moves to make it demonstrate 'impact' risk pushing it down the heritage trail . . ." Your knowledge of Medieval tax law will help you to . . . ? Your study of child rearing in the Elizabethan Age equips you to . . . ? Start training to become a reenactor. Polish up your English Civil War "armour." Get that pike out of the closet.

Richard Overy's April 29 essay in THE, "The Historical Present," has created a stir. He throws down the gauntlet with these words:

Historians have always generated impact of diverse and rewarding kinds, and will continue to do so without the banal imperative to demonstrate added value. There is no real division between what historians can contribute and what the public may expect, but the second of these should by no means drive the first.

Nor should short-term public policy dictate what is researched, how history is taught or the priorities of its practitioners. If fashion, fad or political priority had dictated what history produced over the past century, British intellectual and cultural life would have been deeply impoverished. Not least, the many ways in which historical approaches have invigorated and informed other disciplines would have been lost.

Over at the NYRB, Anthony Grafton worries about the results of this utilitarian calculus. England's Slow Food academy has morphed into McDonald's. "Have it your way." Scholars working in fields that administrators deem useless--paleography, early modern, and premodern history, philosophy--have landed on the chopping block. "From the accession of Margaret Thatcher onward, the pressure has risen," writes Grafton. "Universities have had to prove that they matter. . . . Budgets have shrunk, and universities have tightened their belts to fit. Now they are facing huge further cuts for three years to come—unless, as is likely, the Conservatives take over the government, in which case the knife may go even deeper."

Historians working in America, too, struggle with the burdens of constrained budgets, reduction in full-time positions, eliminated raises, and the push for "relevant" curriculum. But, if the buzz in THE is any indication, what's happening in the UK is something else. Surely, the field of history won't vanish into thin air, as Overy imagines. (More doubtful are his comments on Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan, who "in her 2008 book, The Uses And Abuses of History, called on her peers to reduce their commitment to theory and to write shorter sentences. To do so would be to dumb down what history as a human science is doing." Really?) Still history across the pond may suffer much in this new climate.

Roundup: More on Writing in the Humanities

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Gordon Wood, "In Defense of Academic History Writing," Perspectives on History (April 2010)
Instead of writing . . . narrative history, most academic historians, especially at the beginning of their careers, have chosen to write what might be described as analytic history, specialized and often narrowly focused monographs usually based on their PhD dissertations. . . . [A]cademics have generally left narrative history writing to the nonacademic historians who unfortunately often write without much concern for or much knowledge of the extensive monographic literature that exists. >>>

Rachel Toor, "Bad Writing and Bad Thinking," Chronicle, April 15, 2010.
Many people—publishers of scholarly work, editors at higher-education publications, agents looking for academic authors capable of writing trade books—who think about the general quality of scholarly prose would admit that we're in a sorry state, and most would say there isn't much to do about it. >>>

George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," 1946. Posted on Mount Holyoke's website.
Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. >>>

John L. Jackson Jr., "Just Bad Writing," Chronicle, April 13, 2010.
I actually enjoy reading certain kinds of "bad writing," at least some of the time, especially from the scholars who often get hammered for their impenetrable prose. That's usually anybody who invokes the notion of "performativity" or cites the work of Michel Foucault or gets described as a disciple of Cultural Studies. >>>

Keith Hopper, "Aidan Higgins, The Writer's Writer," TLS, March 31, 2010.
Aidan Higgins is often regarded as a “writer’s writer”, which is usually code for contrary, experimental and out-of-print. Derek Mahon, writing in the TLS in 2007, called him “an austere and often difficult writer, more than a touch old-fashioned, with an astringency that can stir the bile of whippersnappers.” >>>

First Annual Conference on Public Intellectuals, 23-24 April 2010, Harvard University

Randall Stephens

This weekend I'll be taking part in an interesting new conference on public intellectuals. The organizers Larry Friedman (Harvard) and Damon Freeman (UPenn) hope to draw interested parties to the conference. All sessions (held in Harvard's William James Hall) are open to the public.

Here's the summary:

In 1993, literary critic Edward Said defined the ideal intellectual as someone who stood outside circles of power while advancing knowledge and freedom for the wider public in "speaking truth to power." This first annual Conference on Public Intellectuals seeks to deepen and broaden Said's critique by providing an opportunity to scholars who are writing on public intellectuals.

The conference will take place over a period of two days, Friday and Saturday, 23-24 April 2010 at Harvard University. It is free and open to the public. The conference venue is in Room 1305 of William James Hall, 33 Kirkland Street on Harvard's campus. Sixteen papers are spread over four sessions: Public Intellectuals as Cultural Icons; Religion, Science, and Tolerance; and Race, Gender, and Protest, Parts One and Two. The conference also features two plenary sessions on Career Reflections. The conference is also working in conjunction with "The Future of American Intellectual History" symposium taking place Friday afternoon, 23 April in the Lower Level Conference Room at Harvard's Busch Hall.

See the full program here.

Liberal Arts, Humanities Roundup

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The following appeared in recent days. Just when you thought there could not be any more essays or forums on the decline in liberal arts education of the crisis of the humanities. . .

Nancy Cook, "The Death of Liberal Arts," Newsweek, April 5, 2010
. . . . But there's no denying that the fight between the cerebral B.A. vs. the practical B.S. is heating up. For now, practicality is the frontrunner, especially as the recession continues to hack into the budgets of both students and the schools they attend.>>>

Richard A. Greenwald, "Graduate Education in the Humanities Faces a Crisis. Let's Not Waste It," Chronicle Review, April 4, 2010.
I was recently reading Dr. Seuss to my 2-year-old daughter, when, bored of The Cat in the Hat and The Lorax, I picked up a lesser book from the Seussian canon: I Had Trouble Getting to Solla Sollew. To my surprise, the plot of that little-known children's book reminded me a great deal of the current crisis of American higher education.>>>

"Graduate Humanities Education: What Should Be Done?" Chronicle Review, April 4, 2010.
Does graduate education in the humanities need reform? By nearly all indications, the answer is yes. The job picture is grim. The Modern Language Association is projecting a 25-percent drop in language-and-literature job ads for the 2009-10 academic year, while the American Historical Association announced that last year's listings were the lowest in a decade.>>>

Simon Jenkins, "Scientists may gloat, but an assault is under way against the arts" the Guardian, March 25, 2010.
Which is more important, science or the humanities? The right answer is not: what do you mean by important? The right answer is a question: Who is doing the asking?>>>

Elizabeth Toohey, "The Marketplace of Ideas: What’s wrong with the higher education system in the US and how can we fix it?" Christian Science Monitor, March 11, 2010.
The structure of the American university has long been a subject of contention, and now is no exception, especially given the current economic climate. Last year, Mark Taylor called for an end to tenure and traditional disciplines in The New York Times op-ed, “End of the University as We Know It,” and William Pannapacker’s column, “Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don’t Go,” was among the most viewed links on the Chronicle of Higher Education’s website.>>>

Ars Brevis, Vita Brevis?

From the Observer, Sunday, February 28, 2010:

Anushka Asthana and Rachel Williams, "Growing outcry at threat of cuts in humanities at universities: Academics offer stark warning over future of the arts in Britain in letter to the Observer."

An influential group of leading academics and cultural figures has issued a stark warning that they fear for the future of the arts and humanities in British universities.

A letter to the Observer, signed by the directors of major arts institutions and a number of university vice-chancellors, claims that funding cuts and a decision to focus on the sciences have left subjects such as philosophy, literature, history, languages and art facing "worrying times". . . .

Related articles:

Carolyn Foster Segal, "Chiseling Away at the Humanities," Chronicle Review, February 28, 2010.

At last we have the answer to the question that comes up at every one of my college's faculty meetings: Where have the liberal arts gone? China! It seems that China, concerned about creativity and critical thinking, will be handling them from now on—and in small classes, too, at least according to The Chronicle's own "Less Politics, More Poetry." . . .

Jennifer Howard, "Humanities Remain Popular Among Students Even as Tenure-Track Jobs Diminish," Chronicle Review, February 28, 2010.

The results of an important new cross-disciplinary survey of humanities departments make it clear that the humanities remain popular with students and central to the core mission of many institutions. They also confirm that the teaching of English, foreign languages, and other humanistic subjects has become more vulnerable at American colleges and universities. . . .

Nostrum Fatum: Humanities on the Downward Slope

Randall Stephens

This will be an outside scoop item for those of you who saw William M. Chace's "The Decline of the English Department," American Scholar (Autumn 2009). But for those who didn't, Chace raises some interesting questions for English and other departments now fighting it out with fewer students and less support than in decades past. His essay goes along with similar topics Chris Beneke discussed here in recent months.

Here's Chace:

During the last four decades, a well-publicized shift in what undergraduate students prefer to study has taken place in American higher education. The number of young men and women majoring in English has dropped dramatically; the same is true of philosophy, foreign languages, art history, and kindred fields, including history. As someone who has taught in four university English departments over the last 40 years, I am dismayed by this shift, as are my colleagues here and there across the land. And because it is probably irreversible, it is important to attempt to sort out the reasons—the many reasons—for what has happened. . . .

Here is how the numbers have changed from 1970/71 to 2003/04 (the last academic year with available figures):

English: from 7.6 percent of the majors to 3.9 percent
Foreign languages and literatures: from 2.5 percent to 1.3 percent
Philosophy and religious studies: from 0.9 percent to 0.7 percent
History: from 18.5 percent to 10.7 percent
Business: from 13.7 percent to 21.9 percent

Off-campus, the consumer’s point of view about future earnings and economic security was a mirror image of on-campus thinking in the offices of deans, provosts, and presidents. . . .

Well worth a close read.

The Book Business, Down and Out

Randall Stephens

Toby Barnard's essay in the May 8th TLS, "Textual Healing—Ireland: Land of Scholars and Publisher Saints," is well worth reading. (Though the on-line version isn't up on the TLS site just yet.) Barnard considers the fortunes of Irish publishing over the last few decades and laments the 2009 demise of Four Courts Press.

In 1925 W. B. Yeats intoned: "We . . . are no petty people. We are one of the great stocks of Europe. We are the people of Burke; we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of Parnell. We have created most of the modern literature of this country." Even with that illustrious past, Barnard notes: "only one Irish University, Cork, maintained its own press." Why? "[A]lmost from the invention of printing," writes Barnard, "ambitious Irish authors, uncertain how far their words would be spread, preferred to be published outside of Ireland. As well as authorial pride, there were financial incentives.” Turning to the present, Barnard looks at the dire impact of the economic downturn on the industry.

Reading Barnard’s bleak assessment—and his eulogy for Four Courts—I was reminded of a controversial article that appeared about a year ago in Times Higher Education: “Publish and Be Ignored.” Matthew Reisz gauged the shortcomings of British academic publishing that had led a number of “authors to sign up with U.S. and mainstream imprints.” For scholars who churn out specialist monographs, “the only realistic choice is between a British or US academic press. American books tend to be cheaper. British editors, often responsible for far more titles, may adopt a less ‘hands-on’ (or interventionist) approach. But what are the differences in terms of author experience?” The differences were great, said Reisz.

And now, stateside, dark clouds are once again appearing on the horizon. Louisiana, reeling from the financial crisis, may make big cuts to LSU Press, reports the Chronicle: “The Louisiana Legislature wants to slash funds for higher education, and that includes a proposed $40-million cut for the press’s home institution, LSU at Baton Rouge, said Bob Mann, a professor of mass communication there. He also edits a series for the press.” The University of Missouri Press cut half of its staff in the spring. Other state university presses are running behind budget and rethinking financial strategies.

I’ll still keep buying books in some vain hope that my purchases will lend a little help.

See also Ted Genoways’ post at the Virginia Quarterly Review site: “The Future of University Presses and Journals (A Manifesto)”; and Robert B. Townsend, “History and the Future of Scholarly Publishing,” Perspectives (October 2003).

The Last Historians, Seriously

Chris Beneke

My friend Benjamin Carp, a highly regarded historian of the American Revolution, has offered a good-natured response to “The Last Historians?”—my post from last week. It’s comforting to know that scholars as sensible as Carp and his fellow Common-Place blogger, and renowned early national U.S. historian, Jeffrey Pasley are less worried than I am. Apocalyptic warnings about the imminent, digital-driven demise of the traditional university were obviously premature a decade ago, and they are probably premature today. Yet, of all people, historians should appreciate that technological revolutions can sometimes take decades to make their full social impact. Moreover, there are some alarming trends converging on the modern university—an expensive cost structure, high levels of indebtedness among U.S. families, the globalization of college competition, unfavorable demographic patterns, and a host of distance learning innovations—that even a non-futurist might recognize as looming threats to our existence. In fact, you don’t have to hold a degree in economics to see that the tuition bubble of the last two-and-a-half decades looks remarkably similar to the housing bubble. Universities, and especially humanities scholars within universities, need to think hard about how we can develop both better and cheaper forms of higher education. Otherwise the end times (or some comparably grim tribulations) might really be quite near for those of us at institutions with endowments less than the gross domestic product of entire nations.

Now to Carp’s specific criticisms. Do I believe that an iTunes lecture series will substitute for the experience of working closely with Carp or Pasley in a seminar or as advisees? Of course not. But is a student in a typical lecture class of one hundred going to learn significantly more than she would with online course content, a great lecturer video series, and a part-time facilitator? Even if the answer to that question is “yes” and the live lecture course represents a more effective approach to teaching and learning, we still have to ask whether the marginal difference is worth a couple of thousand bucks to the students and their families. We also have to appreciate that our calculus may differ significantly from the calculus made by people outside the academy. You could protest that the university is not a corporation and should not be run like one. And I’d agree. The rub here is that perfectly rational mothers, fathers, and anxious teens often measure the worth of an education the same way that they measure the worth of other goods. And we, as academics, will either provide more educational, cultural, and economic value for their dollar than the alternatives, or we will fail.

What can be done about this value problem? To begin, I would suggest that historians make a stronger case for smaller classes with research-active faculty and that they design courses with more student-faculty interaction built into them. I would also suggest research-active historians consider writing fewer books and articles (and blog posts, for that matter) so that they can devote enough time and intellectual energy to teaching, advising, and programming, thereb making the experience worth the extra money their students are paying to be around living, breathing professional historians.

Regarding Ben’s brief against altering PhD and tenure requirements, I may have gotten ahead of myself in this case. It is nonetheless clear that we are producing too many PhDs with Research I credentials who end up as adjunct lecturers working for $5000/course and no benefits. It’s also clear that we’re publishing a lot of scholarship, especially in the form of books, that gets neither read nor cited (the latter, of course, not always requiring the former). Would the field of history suffer if we produced twenty percent fewer monographs? I doubt it. My sense is that few historians can keep up with all of the work generated in their field of specialization, let alone the profession. Nor do their college libraries have enough money to buy all of the books in a particular sub-specialty from university presses that barely have enough resources to produce them. The point I’m making here is not new. But the convergence of dismal trends (see paragraph one above) does make it newly urgent. I am more and more convinced of the value of research to good teaching. But I don’t believe that we should continue increasing scholarly output just so that we can add lines to our resumes and percentages to our salaries. The educational value of research needs to be repeatedly demonstrated. Teaching and research really do need to complement each other.

At least a year before the recession began and the financial crisis struck, my friends and family members had started to badger me about the high cost of a college education. Was a four-year undergraduate degree really worth $200,000 they’d ask? I’d try to explain. I’d tell them about the generous financial aid packages, the luxurious student facilities, and the economic benefits of a bachelors degree—as well as the great education our students were receiving. They seldom bought it. To non-academics, our self-rationalizations are looking more and more like a bill of goods. As historians, the task of justifying our existence has never been easy. We know implicitly that we’re in the business of educating rather than job training. We know that our research can enrich our teaching. Now we may finally have to prove it.

The Last Historians?

Chris Beneke

In January of this year, Stanley Fish caused something of a stir (again) with a blog entry titled The Last Professor, in which he discussed Frank Donoghue’s sharp and gloomy book: The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities. At the conclusion, Fish observes that he “timed it just right, for it seems that I have had a career that would not have been available to me had I entered the world 50 years later. Just lucky, I guess.” Here was a nice occasion for Fish to emphasize his own humility and for humanities professors to reacquaint themselves with the sensation of excruciating professional angst. Donoghue’s argument, as you might guess from the title, is that the modern non-profit university is increasingly run on a corporate model with teachers hired for short-term contracts and institutional goals defined by explicitly professional ends (on the student side of things) and financial success (on the administrative side). The picture he paints of the humanities job market is bleak. The picture he paints of the conditions of adjunct faculty is bleaker still. Donoghue takes pains to emphasize that the tension between the corporate world and the academic study of the humanities is as old as the tenured, research-oriented humanities professoriate itself. Moreover, he denies that we’re in a “crisis.” This is a long-term trend, he contends, rather than a short-term anomaly. Still, Donoghue makes it abundantly clear that he believes the academic study of humanities subjects to be on the tail end of a long slide toward irrelevance.

What should academic historians make of such a scary report—and what can they do to alter the dismal trajectory that Donoghue charts? The Last Professors offers few concrete recommendations, aside from his wise injunction to stop defending tenure on the grounds of academic freedom because that strategy only “exacerbate[s] the divide between the dwindling number of tenured professors and the growing rank of adjuncts.” And so, with The Last Professors in mind, but with no pretensions to originality or expertise, I offer the following unsolicited recommendations:

First, we need to forthrightly and repeatedly stress the value of the humanities in general, and the work of history in particular. That means, too, that we should think hard and maybe even talk a bit more about the larger value of the humanities in general, and the work of history in particular. And please, let’s try to avoid making the process look like an extended graduate seminar.

Second, we need to make sure that what we do with our students in the classroom and on-line is as conducive to their learning and thinking as it is distinctive. If you’ve seen the lectures at Academic Earth or listened to the lectures at iTunes University, you will have already realized that much of a history professor’s traditional teaching responsibilities can now be easily replicated and widely distributed. Making sure that we bring the latest research into the classroom in an engaging way will help to justify our scholarship, as well as our teaching.

Third, we should ensure that pay, benefits, and respect are more fairly distributed to all of the professionals in our field. For a group that votes overwhelmingly Democratic , tenured and tenure-track professors (as a whole) pay inexcusably little attention to their colleagues who do quite similar work on short-term contracts and for much less pay. Equity and enlightened self-interest both demand that the most privileged among us attend seriously to the conditions of those who now teach sixty-five percent of our classes.

Fourth, we must be engaged with popular works of history that both non-historians and historians will actually read and discuss. We should even be prepared to write such books ourselves.

Fifth, we need to stop pretending that all the work in our discipline is, or should be, of intrinsic interest to the rest of the world. To this point, we could substitute more rigorous teacher training for grad school research commitments and alter tenure and PhD requirements so that a series of article-length essays may be accorded the same worth as a four-hundred page dissertation. We should also reward good public history as generously as we reward good intra-academic scholarship.

Frank Donoghue’s dismal trends may indeed have originated long ago and his dark prophecies may take years to fulfill. But if we’re to avoid being the last generation of history professors, we will need to act quickly.