But, anyway, there are two problems in my opinion. One is funding and that can be fixed though not very quickly. I think it will take at least six years to open the spigot and if it is not done then it will be a very, very long time for things to get better. The other problem is one that I encountered as a college freshman: what good are the humanities? When I search the Internet for the answers to this question I cannot find satisfactory answers. But it seems to me that the humanities are positioned to fill a void in our society.

Economists, I have no idea where they belong, but in any case they fearlessly make many predictions about the future, and they have no basis for those predictions, and their record is abysmal. Yet they thrive.

Not too long ago, I saw on BookTV several Civil War historians discussing a new book that one of them had just published. During the audience Q&A several questions were asked that the historians ducked, amid much nervous laughter. They, unlike economists, understood the limits of their knowledge. Yet, they often talk about the lessons of history.

The humanities, because of its scope in time and space, should be able to draw theories that will enable predictions to be made. But, again, they can’t do it, because they know the limits of the discipline.

When I read Internet articles about the humanities some tell me that the discipline teaches us about human nature and how it is the same everywhere and everywhen. The idea is that the humanities defines human nature. But some practitioners disagree. They say the the focus should be on understanding the human condition everywhere and everywhen so that the student can develop his own theory of human nature. I accept the former and reject the latter view.

But no matter which is correct, if either, the usefulness of the humanities depends on the student. It leaves him with nowhere to go. He is not given enough information to form a working model of human nature and how he should expect life to unfold for him. He needs a process that will help him evaluate the events of his life so that he can better deal with them than otherwise. But, as I understand it, the humanities does not supply this working model of human nature. It is probably impossible, it is dangerous because somebody will strongly disagree with it, and right now it requires someone to really stick his neck out a long, long way.

But what if the working model is wrong in many ways? So what? I think that the humanities, at least some part of it, should offer a course on human nature, what it is, how it varies, how to recognize the variations, what to expect from each variation, and how best to cope with the most difficult parts of it. I am not talking about interpersonal relationships, I am talking about the effects of human nature everywhere and everywhen in general and in our society in particular. The class should start with a list of the varieties of behavioral characteristics of human nature and how those behaviors manifest themselves and how they affect society. Then this list should be applied to all aspects of the humanities. What sort of person was Shakespeare? How did his specific human nature affect his point of view, and his choices? How much of literature is a reflection of the human nature of the author? For example Robert Browning, just before he died, was reading from Epilogue to Asolando to his daughter when he came to a passage that was autobiographical and he said to her, “It almost looks bragging to say this, and as if I ought to cancel it; but it’s the simple truth; and as it’s true, it shall stand.”

Surely all of his work reflected his particular variety of human nature. And the same may be said of poets in general. Are they of only one variety? Why don’t individuals from the other variety write poems? The answer will say a lot about how society works. It will say that not all things are possible for all people, and it will predict what is possible, and even what can be expected of each variety.

Yes, I know all of the objections to this idea, and I reject them. I think that humanity needs to confront our human nature and all of its ramifications. There needs to be a place where that confrontation can take place and where our understanding of life will be improved. The humanities are that place, and taking on that role will transform the humanities to a vigorous place of current ideas about the here and now and about the future. Funding problems will go away. Enrollment will jump. Students will seek schools with the best humanities departments as measured by their ideas about human nature and how it should be dealt with as a society.

So for one, if it’s not obvious from the post, I think the Task Force is closer to the mark than its critics. E.g., they take various worries and anxieties swirling around the humanities seriously enough to actually acknowledge them, engage them, and try to provide some programmatic ways to be responsive to some of the substance of those concerns. I think the Harvard Humanities Project’s recent report is another good document that is mostly speaking back to humanists at Harvard (and elsewhere) but that is trying to be a public document as well. I think at least some of the genre of “Whither the Liberal Arts?” books that are out there by academics work pretty hard to connect with those publics that are not committed to inflexible anti-intellectualism–the new Michael Roth book is a pretty fair attempt in that direction, for example.

I think there are people who are less trying to be a part of the grand public conversation and are more just doing their own thing in a very public way who also count. Cathy Davidson and HASTAC are good examples of that approach.

And I also do think that many of the activists working on labor organizing in the academy are making a meaningful impact, if nothing else just by calling attention to how poor the terms of employment really are in so many universities. That really seems to finally be registering with at least some publics who previously ignored or were unaware of the whole issue. I’m not sure that’s having a specific impact on the humanities, though.

For the narrower public of mostly older professionals, literati, etc. who identified with the humanities as they were in the 1960s and 1970s (publishers, writers, journalists, critics, theater-goers, etc.) I think the gloomy, pessimistic, o-tempora-o-mores sort of public writing that a small number of academic humanists specialize in is effective, but I think at the costs of further isolating the scholarly humanities.