<story><title>The Slow Death of the University</title><url>https://chronicle.com/article/The-Slow-Death-of-the/228991/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ForHackernews</author><text>At the risk of being overly confrontational, the things that make humanities people believe that they are capable of critical thinking (in contrast to STEM types) are comments like yours.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Just at the beginning of the article he states that humanities are only good for rich students to pass their time&lt;p&gt;Where in the article does the author state or imply this? The section beginning &amp;quot;When I first came to Oxford 30 years earlier...&amp;quot; is obviously written to be tongue-in-cheek.&lt;p&gt;A close reading (humanities skill!) of this article might highlight the following passage as the central thesis:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Universities, which in Britain have an 800-year history, have traditionally been derided as ivory towers, and there was always some truth in the accusation. Yet the distance they established between themselves and society at large could prove enabling as well as disabling, allowing them to reflect on the values, goals, and interests of a social order too frenetically bound up in its own short-term practical pursuits to be capable of much self-criticism.  Across the globe, that critical distance is now being diminished almost to nothing, as the institutions that produced Erasmus and John Milton, Einstein and Monty Python, capitulate to the hard-faced priorities of global capitalism.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;  Locking themselves in a room, nostalgically talking with like-minded people without ever doing anything leads nowhere.&lt;p&gt;Again, where in the article does the author suggest this course of action? If anything, he seems to be suggesting the opposite, that the humanities should be returned to their traditional place in the public square, questioning and criticizing the prevailing ideologies of the day:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;It would also seek to restore the honorable lineage of the university as one of the few arenas in modern society (another is the arts) in which prevailing ideologies can be submitted to some rigorous scrutiny. What if the value of the humanities lies not in the way they conform to such dominant notions, but in the fact that they don&amp;#x27;t?&lt;/i&gt;</text></item><item><author>marcosdumay</author><text>What&amp;#x27;s it with humanities people that make them believe that only them, of all people, are able to do critical thinking?&lt;p&gt;Anyway, the author is part of the problem. Just at the beginning of the article he states that humanities are only good for rich students to pass their time. Until the professors themselves stop thinking this way, no government will prioritize them.&lt;p&gt;(And no, I don&amp;#x27;t agree that humanities are useless. They have a huge potential. But for them to be of any use, professors will need to seek those applications, and study them. Locking themselves in a room, nostalgically talking with like-minded people without ever doing anything leads nowhere.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>paganel</author><text>&amp;gt; Universities, which in Britain have an 800-year history, have traditionally been derided as ivory towers, and there was always some truth in the accusation.  (...)  Across the globe, that critical distance is now being diminished almost to nothing, as the institutions that produced Erasmus and John Milton, Einstein and Monty Python, capitulate to the hard-faced priorities of global capitalism.&lt;p&gt;I never looked at Oxford people with the same eyes again after reading Giordano Bruno&amp;#x27;s works and about how the professors in there treated him. From his wiki page (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Giordano_Bruno#England.2C_1583.E2.80.931585&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Giordano_Bruno#England.2C_1583...&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; His views were controversial, notably with John Underhill, Rector of Lincoln College and subsequently bishop of Oxford, and George Abbot, who later became Archbishop of Canterbury. Abbot mocked Bruno for supporting &amp;quot;the opinion of Copernicus that the earth did go round, and the heavens did stand still; whereas in truth it was his own head which rather did run round, and his brains did not stand still&amp;quot;,[23] and reports accusations that Bruno plagiarized Ficino&amp;#x27;s work.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve recently read a book by French historian Jacques Le Goff who was saying something along the lines of: &amp;quot;the University as we know it was born around year 1,000 and flourished for the next couple of centuries, only to become more segregated and focused on itself starting with the 14th century, so much so that the Renaissance happened outside of its sphere of influence&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;So I will keep my hopes up. This downfall of the University as an institution has happened before but we still managed to create and produce great things outside of it.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Slow Death of the University</title><url>https://chronicle.com/article/The-Slow-Death-of-the/228991/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ForHackernews</author><text>At the risk of being overly confrontational, the things that make humanities people believe that they are capable of critical thinking (in contrast to STEM types) are comments like yours.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Just at the beginning of the article he states that humanities are only good for rich students to pass their time&lt;p&gt;Where in the article does the author state or imply this? The section beginning &amp;quot;When I first came to Oxford 30 years earlier...&amp;quot; is obviously written to be tongue-in-cheek.&lt;p&gt;A close reading (humanities skill!) of this article might highlight the following passage as the central thesis:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Universities, which in Britain have an 800-year history, have traditionally been derided as ivory towers, and there was always some truth in the accusation. Yet the distance they established between themselves and society at large could prove enabling as well as disabling, allowing them to reflect on the values, goals, and interests of a social order too frenetically bound up in its own short-term practical pursuits to be capable of much self-criticism.  Across the globe, that critical distance is now being diminished almost to nothing, as the institutions that produced Erasmus and John Milton, Einstein and Monty Python, capitulate to the hard-faced priorities of global capitalism.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;  Locking themselves in a room, nostalgically talking with like-minded people without ever doing anything leads nowhere.&lt;p&gt;Again, where in the article does the author suggest this course of action? If anything, he seems to be suggesting the opposite, that the humanities should be returned to their traditional place in the public square, questioning and criticizing the prevailing ideologies of the day:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;It would also seek to restore the honorable lineage of the university as one of the few arenas in modern society (another is the arts) in which prevailing ideologies can be submitted to some rigorous scrutiny. What if the value of the humanities lies not in the way they conform to such dominant notions, but in the fact that they don&amp;#x27;t?&lt;/i&gt;</text></item><item><author>marcosdumay</author><text>What&amp;#x27;s it with humanities people that make them believe that only them, of all people, are able to do critical thinking?&lt;p&gt;Anyway, the author is part of the problem. Just at the beginning of the article he states that humanities are only good for rich students to pass their time. Until the professors themselves stop thinking this way, no government will prioritize them.&lt;p&gt;(And no, I don&amp;#x27;t agree that humanities are useless. They have a huge potential. But for them to be of any use, professors will need to seek those applications, and study them. Locking themselves in a room, nostalgically talking with like-minded people without ever doing anything leads nowhere.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>arcosdev</author><text>Thank you for this comment...I thought I was going insane for a minute reading the others.</text></comment>