Can the Humanities Be Saved?

“The tragedy of the contemporary academy,” wrote Jennifer Frey in a New York Times op-ed this July, “is that even when traditional liberal learning clearly wins with students and donors, it loses with those in power.” Frey, a philosophy professor and former dean of the University of Tulsa’s Honors College, was speaking from direct experience: though she had built up a vibrant classical liberal arts college at Tulsa, with surging student enrollment and robust philanthropic support, the university administration decided to “go in a different direction,” discontinuing the college’s signature small-seminar class format and eliminating critical staff positions (including hers).