This article profiles A.C. Grayling, a British intellectual who pioneers a new model for college. In his role as founder of the New College of the Humanities, Britain's newest and most controversial institution of higher education, A.C. Grayling could have chosen among several titles. The senior academic officer at most English higher-education…

By now most everyone has heard about an experiment that goes something like this: Students dressed in black or white bounce a ball back and forth, and observers are asked to keep track of the bounces to team members in white shirts. While that's happening, another student dressed in a gorilla suit wanders into their midst, looks around, thumps his…

Academics can be too snug in their institutional silos. They sometimes think of one another as competitors for students, and as a result they duplicate scarce resources in mutually damaging ways. In this article, the author wants to argue that teaching-focused institutions have much to gain from partnerships with research universities on the…

In this article, the author talks about the challenges of a public scholar's life and argues that the rigid standards of hiring and tenure stand in the way of humanities professors as public scholars. She states that the usual lament of the humanities--"There is plenty of money to support work in science and engineering but very little to support…

Why should society support the humanities when so many people are suffering from the effects of the economic crisis? What claim do the humanities, or scholarship generally, have on increasingly limited resources? Shouldn't such pursuits be considered luxuries at a time when people should be focusing on essentials? The alleviation of human…

Colleges and universities increasingly view engineering as an important part of a liberal-arts education. Rather than segregate engineering from the arts and humanities, they are integrating the disciplines, in hopes of educating students to perform more effectively in an increasingly complex and technological world. Several college presidents,…

Loosely structured like think tanks, humanities research centers are the true intellectual homes of many humanities faculty members and are instrumental in breaking the hardened boundaries of the disciplines. (MSE)

The state of the humanities in the college and university curriculum and community, as expressed through the medium of television, and in the "parallel school" (museums, libraries, educational broadcasting, state humanities councils, and historical organizations) is discussed and recommendations are made. (MSE)

Kenneth E. Brashier, Mark S. Lewine, Alexei V. Filippenko, and Donna C. Boyd were the four professors who won the Professors of the Year for 2006. They were chosen from nearly 300 candidates nominated by their institutions for their "outstanding commitment to teaching undergraduate students and their influence on teaching." The annual…

At the annual meeting of the Association of American Colleges, the chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities called for a new core curriculum that she said would bring more coherence to undergraduate education. Wayne Booth discussed an institution caught up in its ambitions. (MLW)

Multicultural scholarship was critiqued by proponents at a meeting of the American Studies Association for a "politics of style" substituting for analysis of society; a "particularism" that has divided researchers into separate camps; and a "political correctness" that has avoided self-criticism. One issue raised was that multiculturalism further…

At a meeting of academic and public humanists, scholars agreed and expressed a need for scholars, the public, and the sponsors of public humanities programs to come together to encourage the humanities in society at large, and to find specific ways to bring humanities to the public's attention. (MSE)

A study examined the effectiveness of the four major programs providing humanities research fellowships: National Endowment for the Humanities, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, and National Humanities Center. Results show declining resources to support the work of individual scholars in the…

Reports concerns of scholars that the National Endowment for the Humanities is increasing support for many popular programs while decreasing or eliminating support for projects that involve the editing of important scholarly papers. Notes congressional support for the Endowment's current policy including its emphasis on fund raising by grant…

In this article, the author contends that the vast majority of American historians no longer regard American culture--whether high culture or mainstream popular culture--as an essential area of study. The much-vaunted culture turn in the humanities has run its course in one of the first disciplines it influenced. Indeed, most of the books today…