An ingenious argument is being used to justify a 49% but nin the budget of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Carol Schneider and David Townsend have called attention to it  in the new issue of Liberal Education (Summer 2013)-- http://www.aacu.org/liberaleducation/le-su13/schneider_townsend.cfm Republican in Congress have, it seems,  experienced  Sudden-Onset  Wealth Transfer  Anxiety  Syndrome (SOWTAS) in the form of a phobia that the NEH budget will shift resources  from the poor to the rich.  This phobia has not afflicted them during their deliberations on other areas of the budget, but the mere mention of the arts and the humanities seems to bring it on.

Schneider and Townsend write that “In its report to accompany the budget resolution for fiscal year 2014, the House Committee on the Budget states that federal subsidies for NEH and NEA (and other public programs) “can no longer be justified” because “the activities and content they fund are generally enjoyed by people of higher income levels, making them a wealth transfer from poorer to wealthier citizens.””

 The whole Liberal Education article , “Defunding Disciplines Basic to Democracy,” should be kept out of the hands of Republican friends lest they too experience  SOWTAS.

LIBERAL EDUCATION AS PALIMPSEST 



 

The Archimedes palimpsest owned by  the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore MD.  The 10th century copy of a treatise by Archimedes was overwritten in the 13th century  with a religious text.

My last blog posting left unstated its premise –that liberal education is a palimpsest.  Underneath many of the texts and documents we study is another narrative  -- the story of gradually emerging,  two steps forward one step back human freedom. The texts sometimes seem difficult for us to comprehend, and what’s below them is often hard to detect.  But we won’t fully understand either unless we keep both in view.  That’s most obviously true of the texts I mentioned in the “Not So Innocent Abroad” blog post -- classical texts relating to the emergence of western political thought, Solon, Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato ..

Yes, Plato, too. I had some fun with Plato and freedom in a piece called “Liberal Education: Liberating Education”. It’s at http://www.wrobertconnor.com/liberal-education-liberating-education.html 

Now let me come back to that theme and put it more bluntly: We won’t fully understand these classical texts and their modern successors unless we bring into focus the struggle for political freedom – and vice versa:  That still unfolding story of human freedom can’t be fully understood without these texts.  

More broadly, classical texts in general are best seen, I believe, within a narrative that comprises different types of freedom, political, intellectual, theological, economic, racial, sexual. And an education based on the classical tradition, a true liberal education, is a liberating education.  It has freedom at its core and as its goal.

That’s why statist regimes in China and elsewhere  will distrust liberal education, and why it is so important that their citizens – and ours –have access to it.

 



The temptation for American colleges and universities to forge close links with Asian countries is a powerful one, and not just for the immediate cash flow.  In an ideal world such linkages should benefit all parties.  But when the partner country is politically repressive, American faculty members understandably raise tough questions.  That is exactly what happened at Wellesley when a distinguished  faculty member at its Chinese partner, Peking University,  ran afoul opf the authorities.   Jeff Jacoby tells the story of Xia Yeliang in “Wellesley Faculty Defend a Threatened Chinese Scholar”

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/09/17/wellesley-faculty-defend-threatened-chinese-scholar/S8t1I3hq4CJKOXwcdhagtM/story.html .

Here’s one way to avoid such problems in the future.  When a partnership is under discussion, the American institution can insist that it be allowed to provide a core course in the emergence of political thought in the West.  It could begin with Solon, Herodotus and Thucydides, go on to Plato and Aristotle, and continue to Hobbes, Locke and the Federalist Papers.  Good scholarly material, no polemics, but the message is clear. The course is a litmus test.  If a country is not willing to allow its students access to such a course, then a partnership will inevitably run into trouble one way or another.  Better to face it at the beginning, no matter how attractive  the  research and financial prospects might be.  

 

A while ago I mentioned that a liberal education, incljuding some classics  might be an advantage in a political career.  J. P. Sarbanes of  (D MD) writes back “ Your mention of me in your blog entry was both accurate and appropriate.  I do believe I am a much better Congressman for my Classics education.  Below is a link to a tete-a-tete I had some years ago with the head of the GSA where I schooled her on the hortatory subjunctive.  Unfortunately, I referred to it as a tense, rather than a mood -- an error  pointed out to me by a number of scholars who happened across this link.  Nevertheless, I enjoyed pulling on my classics training. 


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnPZ-Vldjgw

Helen Vendler was kind enough to respond to my recent blog post on Seamus Heaney's last words.  She writes:“I think he was thinking back to his poem "The Master", which, as he told me himself, is about Milosz.  You may know it.  Seamus climbs precariously up the master's tower, but when he gains the Master's presence and is instructed by him, he finds the following:

Deliberately he would unclasp

his book of withholding

a page at a time, and it was nothing

arcane, just the old rules

we all had inscribed on our slates.

Each character blocked on the parchment secure

in its volume and measure.

Each maxim given its space.

Tell the truth.  Do not be afraid.




Durable, obstinate notions,

like quarrymen's hammers and wedges

proofed by intransigent service.
Like coping stones where you rest
in the balm of the wellspring.

So I think he may have been crossing his Milosz poem with the address of the risen Jesus to Mary Magdalene, saying that human touch was no longer possible between himself and this woman.”

Altamura painter, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ACCESSION NUMBER

59.178

--


“… Greece when this  bowl was made (around 470 -460 BC)wa at the height of its much imitated but still unsurpassed civilizati on.  And yet here its artists were , depicting themselves rampaging barbarians, capable not only of thinking the worst, but of doing it.”

Sebastian Smee “A WAR  AND ITS RAVAGES DEPICTED ON A CELEBRATORY VESSEL”  The Boston Globe September 10 2013.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/theater-art/2013/09/09/frame-frame-mixing-bowl-krater-with-scenes-from-fall-troy/MDRFXcUY23uI0FEax8IUNP/story.html

Worth reading!

At Seamus Heaney’s funeral Michael Heaney said that his last words  “written a few minutes before he passed away, were in his beloved Latin. And they read: ‘Noli timere.’ ‘Don’t be afraid.’”  http://www.boston.com/2013/09/02/bgcom-heaney/sXh3GrNoZ1Q6KzLD4inViN/story.html

“His beloved Latin”? With roots that reached so deep into the Irish muck, surely he would have been a fine poet, even if Latin had never been willow-whipped into him.  But a better poet from grasping that perennial tug of war between the Anglo-Saxon and the Latinate? And from hearing the cadences of the Roman poets in his ears? Surely that too.

So which of his beloved Latin texts did the famous  Seamus have in mind at that moment.  It’s been claimed that his last words were the same as the first words Pope John Paul II spoke at his inauguration.  That’s not literally true, but in section 5 of his first homily (22 October 1978)  the Pope did say “Do not be afraid. Open wide the doors for Christ. To his saving power open the boundaries of states, economic and political systems, the vast fields of culture, civilization and development. Do not be afraid. “ http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/homilies/1978/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19781022_inizio-pontificato_en.html -- words often neglected by some of his successors.  

Or was our poet  thinking further back?  Was it Thomas a Kempis Imitatio Christi 1.23.6  “ Stude nun taliter vivere ut in hora mortis valeas potius gaudere quam timere”? “Make every effort now to live so in such a way that at the hour of death you may have the strength to rejoice rather than  be afraid.”  And was Thomas  in turn thinking back to the Vulgate version of Jesus’ words in John 6.20 “ἐγώ εἰμι. Μὴ φοβεῖσθε. “It’s me; don’t be afraid,” echoed at another moment when Jesus astonishes those about him,  Matthew 28.10 and Luke 24.38.

Or was it none of this religious stuff, but Lucretius in the de rerum natura? I bet Heaney liked Lucretius and knew well these lines from book one:

nunc ratio nulla est restandi, nulla facultas,               110
aeternas quoniam poenas in morte timendum.
ignoratur enim quae sit natura animai …

Did he learn from Lucretius that we have nothing to fear even in a materialist universe?

I don’t know which of these it was -- All of the above?  None of the above? Something else entirely? Maybe it doesn’t much matter: A life doubly grounded,  in Earth and Word, can  figure out for itself that it has  no need for fear.  

 

When I posted yesterday’s blog entry, I realized that I had neglected to report on Governor Pat McCrory’s   comments on higher education soon after he took office. Here’s the scoop:

North Carolina is one of the few swing states that turned red in the 2012 elections. The governorship, the General Assembly and the state Sensate all went to the Republicans, as Romney, by a narrow margin. carried the state.  So North Carolina will be a good  case of what Republican stewardship  will amount to.

The new governor, Pat McCrory, indicated what that might mean for public higher education  in a talk show appearance with Bill Bennett,  ex-drug czar, and one time humanist.  Some quotations, however, give a taste of it:

“[My funding plan for higher education is] not based on butts in seats but on how many of those butts can get jobs."

“I think some of the educational elite have taken over our education where we are offering courses that have no chance of getting people jobs…”

“….if you want to take gender studies, go to a private school and take it. But I don’t want to subsidize that if it’s not going to get someone a job.”

You have to hear the interview to believe it. Here’s the link: http://www.billbennett.com/michaelmedved/player.aspx?g=aHR0cDovL21lZGlhLnRvd25oYWxsLmNvbS90b3duaGFsbC9iZW5uZXR0L0dvdk1jQ3JvcnkxLjI5LjEzLm1wMw^!^^!^

The Governor clearly underestimated a potent force in NC politics --  the loyalty of NC citizens to the University of North Carolina’s long history of accessible, high-quality public education.  By underesti8mating that, McCrory shot himself in the foot: he sounded as if he wanted to turn  two hundred years of UNC  excellence into a vocational training program.  The reaction in the state and nationally was swift and strong – news articles, op ed pieces, letters to the editor  etc.  My own contribution,  entitled “The Gold Standard,  is at http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/02/10/2664770/w-robert-connor-gold-standard.html

Most dramatic has been the success of an electronic petition that at last count had over 12,000 signatures, and some  sharply wsorded comments:P http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2013/02/01/hundreds-tell-gov-mccrory-to-respect-liberal-arts-education/

No doubt McCrory fans like his bashing of the “elites” but so far his plan for vocationalizing public higher education seems to have blown up in his face. 

At last, what we have all been waiting for – a narrative of decline that isn’t just one more pity party for the classics, the humanities or liberal education.  The narrator is the Governor of North Carolina, elected last fall amid  the rebirth of the Know Nothing Party in what used to be the  leading state of the “New South.”

Governor McCrory, you may remember,  got national attention from an interview with Bill Bennett in which he revealed his vision for higher education in North Carolina:  “[My funding plan for higher education is] not based on butts in seats but on how many of those butts can get jobs."  In other words he wanted to cut back funding for courses that did not directly lead to entry level jobs.  Outrage followed. His blinkered vision had led the governor to grasp the third rail of North Carolina politics, the affection Carolinians of all regions, classes and education levels feel for their university.  They don’t want a politician with no expertise in educational matters setting the direction for UNC.

Confronted with the outrage Governor McCrory seemed to back off, but did he learn anything? In opening remarks to a recent conference of CEOs he is reported to have said, “There is a discrepancy  between what we’re teaching and what employers need … What’s happening is the tech courses are leaving and the liberal arts are coming in.” Now there is a narrative of decline or rather, Ducky Wucky,  of the falling of the sky. Can you imagine anything worse? After all the efforts to advance the STEM disciplines (and no others), after all the right wing poor mouthing of liberal education, all the “Jobs, jobs, jobs” talk, all the wringing of hands about the effects of the recession on ill-prepared college graduates, etc. etc. “the tech courses are leaving” and those dreadful liberal arts are taking over. 

Move over, Mr. Gibbon. Here is the real decline and fall!

How could this possibly happen? All the pressures are in the other direction. Is it conceivable that students have glimpsed something that the learned governor has missed –that a college education ought to include a deepening understanding of history, and philosophy, great art and literature, global cultures and personal values?  It ought to develop capacities for written and oral expression and for critical thinking and analytical reasoning. It ought to remove blinkers.  Only in that way can college held students be ready for rapid changes in the economy, personal challenges, and leadership roles in society.

Did you miss something, Governor?

Thanks to Jean Houston for calling to my attention a letter by Karen T. Davis in the Raleigh News and Observer on August 27th.

 

Would you be surprised to learn that the bright, well prepared, highly-motivated  students who study a humanities subject at Oxford find their way in the world?  It seems a no-brainer, but apparently the cultural climate in then UK demands proof that “…  Humanities higher education is not a disadvantage for graduates in a highly competitive economy. Employers, for example in financial and legal sectors, drew steadily on all five main Humanities degree subjects over the whole period [of this study]. The responsiveness of Humanities graduates to emerging economic trends suggests that the literate, critical, and communication skills that have long been the core of Humanities-based higher education continue to stand graduates very well”.

Does this surprise anyone? Or does anyone  feel amazed to learn  that “Humanities-based higher education” makes a substantial contribution to the British economy, particularly in light of the fact that a many B.A. Oxon.s go into finance, law, or the  media ?
 
If this seems surprising, then you will need to wade through an elaborate study based on 11,000 Oxford graduates from 1960 – 1989. It’s all in Humanities Graduates and the British Economy: The Hidden Impact: http://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/sites/torch/files/publications/Humanities%20Graduates%20and%20the%20British%20Economy%20-%20University%20of%20Oxford_0.pdf

The surprise, it seems to me,  is that this  has to be demonstrated with detailed statistics and reports of extensive interviews, and that the question of career satisfaction is never incisively explored.  An uncomprehending public in the UK seems to want to be assured that these humanisticly trained Oxonians  actually got a job. On this side of the Atlantic we might not be so discreet. Our British friends didn't ask the crass question "How much do you get paid?"  A comparable study done over here would probably probe into the pocket book.

Maybe that would be good. That is what such studies are  really asking, I suspect. Ot's what the age demanded.  By putting that question squarely, the underlying values of the project would be easier to recognize -- What matters is money. Full Stop. That's the assumption that has to be dragged into the light and challenged. 

How to do that I am not sure. But, if there were among those 11,000 a quixotic lover of poetry, ill paid, no doubt --  would we totally despise him if he wrote:

For three years, out of key with his time,
He strove to resuscitate the dead art
Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"
In the old sense. Wrong from the start !

No, hardly, but, seeing he had been born
In a half savage country, out of date;
Bent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn;
 
--
  
Thanks to Tony Grafton for calling the report to my reluctant  attention, and thereby bringing me back to a deliciously brilliant poem by Ezra Pound.