The Case for a 'Useless' Education — Interesting Times with Ross Douthat

[0:00] So what you hear people saying now, well, because AI is changing the workforce, we now need the [0:06] humanities for these soft skills that are now incredibly important. I may have said that to [0:13] myself contemplating my own children's future. Yes. Yes. This is exactly the wrong case. Okay. [0:19] Jennifer Frey, welcome to Interesting Times. Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled [0:29] to be here. So I am like you, I think a book person. And I feel like for basically, if not my [0:39] entire life, at least my entire adult life, I have been living in the shadow of the decline of all [0:48] that I hold dear in terms of novels, poetry, philosophy, essays, history, right? Literacy is [0:57] going down. Fewer young people read books every year. And the story of the academic humanities is [1:03] basically a story of declining enrollment and disappearing jobs. And now comes AI, maybe as [1:10] the final destroyer, burying Plato and Aristotle in a wave of slop, or maybe, maybe as a weird kind of [1:19] savior, creating a world where suddenly having a broad understanding of history and human nature [1:25] becomes important again. And I have you here. You're a liberal arts evangelist who built a [1:33] college humanities program that was briefly quite successful. And we're going to talk about the [1:40] decline of the humanities, maybe if we can be optimistic about their potential rebirth, and maybe [1:46] just about the career prospects for our kids. But I'm going to... That's a lot. It's a lot. Well, [1:53] you know, we've got, we've got a little bit of time. Let's get to it. So, but I'm going to start by [1:57] playing the part of a skeptic. And I'm going to try and give you a little bit of a hard time about [2:04] the vocation that you've chosen. So suppose I didn't have any kind of primal ancestral attachment [2:10] to literature or the arts. Suppose I'm just a technically competent person who wants my kids [2:16] to learn useful skills and be employable in 21st century America. Why should I care if my kids [2:23] study the humanities? What's in it for them? Yeah, that's a fair and very important question. [2:30] And your skepticism is obviously very widely shared. It was shared by my own parents, [2:36] and also by my husband's parents. So I married a philosopher and a professor. And when both of us [2:45] went to explain to our parents what we were going to study in college, it was not met so warmly [2:52] or with affection. So I think the skepticism is fair. You know, I don't know that it's so much a [3:01] focus on books, although I share your view that the purported death of literacy is a tragedy. But if we go [3:09] back to the beginning of philosophy in Plato, I mean, Socrates, of course, didn't write anything [3:15] and was very skeptical. And it wasn't a book culture, right? Because we didn't have the printing [3:20] press yet. So certainly I think humane learning predates our book culture. So for me, it's less [3:30] about books, even though I'm a bookworm. But I think, you know, the deeper question is about [3:39] what I would call liberal learning, or a kind of learning that is the cultivation of the higher [3:49] capacities in a person. And the cultivation of those capacities, as it were, for its own sake, [3:56] because it is good and important to cultivate them, because we're human, right? The question, [4:04] the teleological question of like, what is it for, is a very deep and important question for us humans. [4:12] And so I think, you know, my concern is that we have lost our ability to understand [4:21] the intrinsic value of engaging in that sort of self-cultivation, right? The Greeks would call [4:29] it paideia. The Germans would call it bildung. I might just call it a liberal education or a liberal [4:37] learning, but it's all the same sort of thing. It's about what is it to contribute to and live [4:46] in a flourishing human society. Is this a moral understanding? Because there are people who will [4:53] say, you know, Germany in the early 20th century was one of the most cultured societies in human [5:00] history in terms of its engagement with philosophy, literature, the arts, music. And yet none of that [5:08] obviously prevented highly cultivated Germans from participating in atrocities. So where's the [5:15] proof, I guess, that people who go through this process gain some kind of greater moral awareness? [5:22] Well, I mean, I think the proof is always in the student, right? But you also have to recognize [5:28] that there is an ineliminable element of human freedom and education. So when we talk about teaching [5:35] and learning, right, the learning has to come from the student. And, you know, a good teacher who has [5:46] a good pedagogy is always going to be especially attuned to the student and what the student needs [5:54] and how to draw out of the student the best that that student can achieve. But you cannot, trust me, [6:02] and any educator will tell you this, you cannot force the student. You know, you can incentivize. We do that [6:11] through grades and credentials. But ultimately, they have to want that sort of self-cultivation. [6:20] Now, when you look at a culture, right, and you want to ask yourself, okay, well, like, how did we go [6:27] from, you know, Weimar Germany to Nazism? Obviously, education is going to be a part of that, but it's [6:33] not in any way going to be the whole of it. But I don't buy the, you know, Nazism is a proof that [6:41] higher learning doesn't work. I mean, the point of fact is that the Nazis were very much against [6:48] higher education in many ways and wanted to constrain and control it. [6:52] They had some very specific ideas, let's say. But what about the idea that this kind of learning [7:01] has to defend the value of engagement for its own sake, like, even if it doesn't make someone [7:09] a better person? Like, would you say that there is an inherent value in being able to read and engage [7:18] with Plato's Republic or being able to listen to and experience, you know, Handel or Bach or anyone [7:25] else who's considered a great composer that just is a thing unto itself? [7:31] Absolutely. [7:32] Right. So even if the person having that experience remains a bad person in their, like, [7:37] everyday interactions, they have still gained something valuable. [7:40] Absolutely. Yes. I mean, you know, we're all deeply imperfect, Ross, in a variety of ways. And [7:49] I think the Nazism case is especially interesting. And here I'll just be maximally provocative, [7:56] because I think that it's true. Something that was happening in higher education at this period of [8:03] time was eugenics. So if you look at institutions of higher education in the United States and in the UK, [8:13] what you will find is that eugenics was very popular and accepted almost universally. Now, [8:21] I think that's a very dangerous ideology. But that ideology is coming out of our fanciest institutions. [8:29] And of course, you can find it in Supreme Court cases and everything else. Now, that toxic ideology [8:36] makes its way into Nazi ideology. The Nazis were not, like, unique in having this eugenic worldview. [8:48] And institutions of higher education were not somehow inoculated from that either. [8:54] But then isn't there an argument, a critique of the humanities argument that says that intellectual [9:03] mentality and the eugenic mentality could fit together pretty naturally? It's like, okay, [9:07] to be human is to appreciate Bach and Plato. And only our smartest university students do that. So only [9:15] they're fully human and so on down the eugenicist argument. So tell me why that's wrong. And why [9:20] why are the humanities actually for everyone rather than being a kind of rarefied pursuit? [9:26] Yeah. Thank you for asking that. So I just think as a matter of fact, we have a lot of evidence [9:33] that, well, I think I, you know, I tend to talk about liberal arts education rather than the humanities, [9:41] but in the best case, they're sort of the same expression. You know, this idea that [9:48] that, um, a higher sort of learning and a kind of self-cultivation is, is truly liberating. [9:55] Um, that it helps people have, um, a, a deeper sense of purpose and meaning in their life. [10:03] Um, and also helps them to cultivate a space of genuine leisure, right? Um, that is something where [10:14] there's a significant track record, whether we're talking about Frederick Douglass or Anna Julia Cooper [10:21] or W.E.B. Du Bois, um, or whether we're talking about entire movements of the British working class, [10:29] right? Like really taking control of their education by whatever means. Um, we have this kind of great [10:37] cloud of witnesses, um, who can attest to the fact that this has completely transformed their lives, [10:45] not just materially or not principally for material, um, gains, but spiritually. [10:54] Can you say a little bit more about the liberal arts and the British working class? [10:58] Because I think, I, I think people are accustomed to the idea that, [11:03] you know, you can pluck a poor person or an enslaved person who, you know, then turns out to be [11:09] a genius of some kind, that that sort of the individual talent exists. But it's really striking [11:16] to read about the role that the liberal arts played in these large scale working class communities in [11:21] the past. No, I mean, it's an absolutely fascinating history and I don't know why people don't talk about [11:27] it more. And not just in the British working class, but certainly there have also been similar movements [11:33] in the United States. Um, what you, what you see, I think really clearly is that this need that I'm [11:43] talking about, um, the need for self-reflection, self-knowledge, understanding, um, cultivating the life of [11:53] the mind. Um, this is like a basic human need and it, it really connects to me personally because I did [12:00] not grow up in a home filled with books. I did not have intellectual parents. My father drove a forklift [12:07] in a paper factory and my mother was a elementary school teacher. Um, but they were, you know, good [12:16] parents who took me to the library. Um, I just started reading on my own, I think I was four or something, [12:22] and I really loved it. And so they would sort of find ways to make that more available to me. [12:30] Um, and I had this like incredibly robust interior life as a kid. I mean, just like off the charts. [12:38] But what about your parents? Do you think that your parents were missing something that had been [12:44] denied them in their own childhoods that you were just fortunate to achieve? [12:48] You know, certainly, uh, in my, in my mother's case, um, you know, she, uh, left the house at 16. [12:56] She came from like, um, a not great home situation that she needed to get out of. And so I think there [13:03] was a practical imperative for her, um, to, to make money and get settled down and things like that. [13:11] Um, but it's also true that over time, um, my parents had two children who were pretty intellectual. [13:18] My brother's also a philosophy PhD. Uh, um, somehow miraculously my, my parents, uh, sent two [13:27] intellectual Catholics into the world. And it's not, it's not like they were never reading. It's just that, [13:33] you know, a lot of professors come from families of professors. I am not one of them. Um, and so these, [13:40] this kind of history, um, it, it connects to me because, you know, my background is more working [13:46] class and my experience of kind of deepening my own interior life without having any sense that [13:53] that was like a project you engaged in. It was just something that I did. Um, and that I later came to [14:00] see as, uh, the most, uh, essential thing that I ever did. Um, I, I think it's incredibly precious and [14:09] we should do all we can to, to try to incentivize and encourage and protect that. [14:14] But doing all we can, at least at this moment, it seems to me requires [14:20] making some claims that Americans in the early 21st century are pretty uncomfortable [14:26] making about, about the idea that just, for instance, that an encounter with Shakespeare [14:33] is better than an encounter with, you know, YA fiction, or that an encounter with the Odyssey [14:41] is better, however good it turns out to be, than an encounter with Christopher Nolan's adaptation of [14:46] the Odyssey. And the skeptic says, look, you know, it's a free country. There's a marketplace of books [14:52] and ideas. And back in the old days, when all you had was a Bible and Shakespeare, [14:58] maybe people felt like they had to read those things, but now they, you know, read, [15:02] they read what they want to read and maybe it doesn't rise to your standards. But what's, [15:09] you know, you have to make a case, right? To me, the Philistine skeptic, that Shakespeare is better [15:15] than John Grisham. Is Shakespeare better than John Grisham? Yes. Why? Um, I haven't read John [15:21] Grisham since high school, though I haven't. I haven't read John Grisham in, in, in a while. [15:25] Um, I'm just plucking, we're, I'm, I'm dating myself as a mid-40s person that, that it's better, [15:33] that Shakespeare is better. Give me a difference. What's one, one, one qualifying difference that [15:38] lets us tell that we should be reading Hamlet before or distinct from reading The Firm or A Time [15:48] to Kill? Because Hamlet, wow, The Firm. Sorry, I just, I actually read that. I'm taking us back [15:55] to the 1990s. I also read a lot of trash, just FYI, read like all of V.C. Andrews, for example. Um, [16:03] anyway, um, so I would say that, I mean, let's just look at the language, first of all. Um, Shakespeare's [16:11] language, um, is, is justly globally famous, right? As just a, um, a very high form of English. And what [16:21] he's doing with language, um, is, is to this day like so astonishing. Um, it's really, it somehow never [16:29] loses, um, its power to surprise and sort of invite you, um, to think about what language can do. I [16:37] mean, I think the best writers do this. And also, you know, Shakespeare really challenges you. And, [16:44] uh, um, I, I enjoyed The Firm. Just, I mean, just, just to be clear, it was entertaining. Um, [16:51] but there's a difference between, um, being amused and entertained and I think really, um, you know, [16:59] experiencing maybe what we would call great art or high art. Um, because great art or high art, [17:06] it really calls you, I think, to those transcendentals, right? Truth, beauty, and goodness. [17:12] And it calls you to them in a way that, um, asks you to ascend to something that is clearly, like, [17:21] demanding. And, um, that takes sort of more deep modes of reflection, right? If you're going to [17:29] read like a, like a Dan Brown novel, it's very difficult to imagine, um, having sustained [17:35] conversations about Dan Brown novels, like, over years. It's quite easy to imagine doing that with [17:43] Shakespeare. I do that. Like, uh, it's just, it's just so rich. And so I think we should not shy away [17:52] from saying that. There is a kind of, of depth in great art that demands our attention in a way [18:02] that is absent in Dan Brown. But so that is a defense of hierarchy, right? Yes. [18:11] Which is in some way undemocratic. No, no, I disagree with that. I'm sorry. [18:18] Say more. Sorry. Um, yeah. Okay. I mean, yeah, of course there's a hierarchy of goods, [18:25] but, um, I, I just think that if you have no sense of higher, then it becomes very difficult [18:35] to talk about higher education generally. Whenever we're talking about, um, goods in life, [18:41] right, there are trade-offs and we need to balance things. But as a matter of fact, [18:46] the sort of like, let's just take kind of great books education. You'll find great books education [18:52] in community colleges. Um, you find great books education still completely outside of institutions [19:00] of higher education. Um, you find great books education in certain high schools. I mean, I think [19:08] these things, um, don't necessarily, they don't have to be luxury goods. And I think it's a choice that we [19:16] make politically to say that they are, and we can debate that choice, but that's just a choice that [19:21] we have because it's, I mean, it, this isn't like a science lab. Um, I don't have a microscope that costs [19:30] $30,000. It's really just, you need some books and they're pretty cheaply available these days and [19:37] it can be done. Right. But you, but you also don't have, you also don't have a way of [19:45] definitively measuring because you don't have a microscope and proving, you know, this is valuable, [19:52] this is not right in, in the humanities. You have to rely on claims that I think make sense to a lot [20:00] of people, but are not sort of the most rigorous scientific claims. And if we were sitting here and [20:06] we invited Plato into the conversation, right, he might, he might say, listen to this, you know, [20:15] uh, listen, listen to this, this woman who wants, who thinks that like an encounter with [20:21] greatness and truth can be mediated by a playwright. Playwrights, they should all be banished from the [20:28] ideal city. Right. But there, but there are all, all that I'm suggesting is that if we're trying to [20:35] figure out what this thing is and who should be exposed to it, even the classics themselves do [20:41] not agree. Right. This is itself contested within the very tradition you're defending. [20:46] Oh, for sure. So I just finished teaching a class, uh, called the history of liberal education [20:51] in the university. And we started with Plato and we ended basically with Weber. And, and there's all [20:56] kinds of disagreements or different formulations. You know, some people like Cicero are, are more [21:02] invested in sort of the civic aspect of humane learning. Um, where it's enabling you to participate [21:11] fully in politics. Oh yeah. Right. And, and he is, he is writing, um, explicitly in this kind of [21:18] Republican ideal. And, but I, I think there's a remarkable kind of red thread running through all [21:26] of that, which is this idea that there is something really essential and important, not just to [21:35] individuals, but to culture and society in having something that is more than an education that we [21:44] would call professional and that they would call servile. Um, you know, Aristotle, interestingly, [21:51] and this always like really strikes students because they just think it's so wild. Like it's just so [21:56] unbelievably wild, but Aristotle says the goal of education is leisure. And we forget that the [22:02] Greek word, the root for school is leisure. And Aristotle says, look, you know, we wage war for [22:08] peace. Like we work for leisure, but leisure is not idleness or amusement. And it's definitely not just [22:15] resting up so you can get back to work. It is that space that we need to set aside to cultivate the [22:22] highest parts of us. And so I just think there is this red thread there and you're right. There's [22:28] lots of disagreement, right? Nobody, nobody who's ever had any encounter with any kind of great books [22:34] learning experience comes away thinking like, oh yeah, like the West. That was like one thing. [22:38] Uh, just one, one idea, like Plato, Plato to NATO, right? It's the, so, okay. So we're not in a world [22:48] where we educate for leisure. I think that's, I think that's fair to say right now and whatever, [22:54] well, and, but whatever, whatever has happened in American education and American higher education [23:00] in the last three or four decades has seemed pretty unremittingly hostile to that mentality. And that [23:09] you can see this in just, you know, the numbers of people studying the liberal arts. You can see it in, [23:16] you know, lots of colleges are going to close over the next 30 years, but it's liberal arts [23:20] colleges that are sort of on the chopping block first. And then there's this, I think, political [23:27] and cultural polarization that's eaten away at the humanities from both sides with the left [23:34] critiquing the very idea of a canon that it's all just dead white male privilege. The right saying, [23:39] oh, you know, these liberal arts academics, they're all just irredeemably woke and they should [23:44] be defunded in favor of more useful subjects, right? Yeah. So I want to talk about those forces, [23:49] but I want you to tell me about your own experience first before we talk about the left and the right. [23:54] So tell me why you left the University of South Carolina and moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma in 2023, [24:04] was it? Yeah. Yeah. Tell me, tell me about what you, what you did. Yeah. It was kind of wild from [24:10] beginning to end, really. So if you look at sort of the decline of the humanities, [24:15] you see like spikes. So there was the Great Recession and then there was COVID. [24:21] These are downward spikes. Oh yeah. Yeah. [24:23] And the trends obviously predate COVID. At the University of Tulsa, for example, [24:31] they had this initiative, which thankfully failed, but it was called True Commitment. And the idea was [24:38] basically to take the College of Arts and Sciences and kind of consolidate it and make TU a sort of [24:45] explicit trade school. And so the philosophy department like was shuttered along with many [24:52] other departments and programs. And, you know, I was complaining loudly about all of these things. [24:58] And, um, at some point in 2021, um, I was dissing the University of Tulsa for True Commitment. [25:08] And I got this reply on Twitter, actually it was May, 2021. I got this reply and the reply said, [25:13] Hey Jen, like, we're just not that bad. And I was like, who's that? And it was the president of the [25:18] University of Tulsa, which was slightly- The magic of social media in action. [25:22] And I just sort of sheepishly said, um, you know, did I say anything wrong? Um, and- and he's- he said, [25:32] no, it's not that you said something wrong. He was like, but you should come visit us. Like, we're not [25:35] that bad. And, um, so actually I did go visit them. Uh, subsequently I went and I gave a talk on the [25:42] university and the liberal arts. And that university president said, oh, I want to start an honors [25:49] college, like a mini St. John's. You know, I want it to be like great books. I want it to be- [25:54] St. John's, just for listeners who don't know, there's two colleges, one in Annapolis and one [25:59] in Santa Fe that are explicitly great books, undergraduate programs. [26:02] Yes, great books all the way. Um, and I was like, oh, well that's, yeah, you should- you should totally [26:09] do that. That would be amazing. Like, I would definitely be cheering you on. And he was like, [26:13] well, would you like want to run it? And I said, well, I'll think about it. And then, uh, obviously I [26:18] agreed to do it. Um, but I wasn't in any way looking for an administrative job. I was not [26:24] looking to move to Oklahoma. Um, I was, you know, recently tenured and very happy where I was and [26:31] very invested in my own projects. But once I was given this, what I thought would surely be an [26:37] unrepeatable opportunity, uh, to sort of put my ideas into practice, which as a philosopher is like [26:43] exciting, but also like very dangerous, you know? It's like being good at thinking and like doing, [26:49] it's not necessarily the same skill. So, um- The philosopher queen is an important figure in- [26:56] Yes. In, uh- Yes. So after contemplating the forms, I decided to move to Tulsa and try to [27:04] realize this thing. Um, I, I thought it would work, but I really had no idea. I mean, [27:09] it was kind of terrifying. Um, but it did, it did work. It, um, really attracted a lot of students [27:17] and, uh, donors and foundations. And, you know, we were just incredibly excited about everything that [27:26] was happening. And I think, um- And just, just for background, Tulsa is a private university. [27:31] Yeah. Right. It's not a state school. [27:33] Right. It's sort of the private liberal arts, um, [27:36] School in, in Oklahoma. Yeah. [27:38] Right. Yeah. [27:38] And so how many students does Tulsa have? [27:40] Uh, a little less than 3,000. I think it's the- [27:44] Under, undergrad? [27:45] Yes. Or, yeah. [27:46] Yeah. I think if you throw in grad students, it's more like 4,000. [27:49] Okay. And so how many, how many kids roughly did you end up enrolling in the honors college? [27:54] So every year we were somewhere between 26 to 28% of incoming freshmen. [28:01] Okay. [28:02] Yeah. Um- [28:03] And what did the, just very quickly, what did the overall program look like? [28:07] So you'd be signing up first and foremost for the Corps. So that's four semesters of great books. [28:12] You can think, like, from Homer to Hannah Arendt. So, uh, first, uh, seminar is the three ancient [28:20] cities, Athens, Rome, Jerusalem. Um, and, you know, you, you read, uh, Plato and Aristotle and Greek [28:28] tragedy and, and some Greek history. And then you do the same for the Romans. And then, of course, [28:33] you read some of the Bible. Um, and then you go into long Middle Ages. And that's basically [28:42] Augustine to the Reformation. So we start with the confessions and we go all the way into, you know, [28:49] Luther and Calvin. And then your second year in the Corps, um, it's the birth of modernity. [28:56] So there's where you get- [28:58] It's a big year. [28:58] Yeah. [28:59] A lot going on. [28:59] Yeah. No, it's a, it's a fantastic course. Um, so that's basically Machiavelli to Mary Shelley. [29:07] And then the last sequence is 19th and 20th century. And that starts with de Tocqueville. [29:13] And then actually it ends, uh, the professor gets sort of like a free choice about where it ends. [29:18] So I always say Homer to Hannah Arendt, because I think Hannah Arendt is the last required reading. [29:23] So like St. John's, it's a set curriculum. And that was very important, um, that everyone be reading [29:31] the same books because it was also a residential experience. And like, we didn't force you to live [29:36] in the honors dorm, but most, most, most students wanted to. And, um, so I think we had like sort of [29:43] three pillars, um, when I would address incoming freshmen as dean of honors, the first thing that [29:50] I would remind them is that they are going to die. And that recognition of this was the first [29:55] step towards wisdom. Um, so strong mission and vision, right? So we are not here to prepare you [30:04] for a job. We are here to prepare you for life and for being a human being. Um, secondly, community. [30:11] So it was very, it's very important to me because I think that it's true, um, that liberal [30:17] learning takes place in a community. And then the third thing is we took very seriously in a way [30:23] that very few people are willing to do, um, the connection between an education for freedom and [30:30] the need to cultivate character, right? That helps you to be free. We had these sort of virtues of [30:36] liberal learning that we would name and talk about explicitly. Um, and they were things like humility [30:43] and civility and fortitude. Um, and then also curiously old fashioned ones like, uh, studiousness, [30:51] where that has nothing to do with hitting the books. Um, studios he taught us this sort of like [30:57] cultivated attention. So sort of like training that desire to know so that it's, um, focused on the good [31:05] stuff as opposed to like looking at tick tock for five hours a day or, you know, um, yeah. [31:12] Hypothetically, I've never done that. Um, what, what tell, just say something about the kind of students [31:18] that you got. This is a plain state university, like who, who, who is, who is signing up for this [31:25] program at Tulsa? We, you know, uh, we got students from all over the country first and foremost, [31:31] although obviously a healthy number from the states that circle around Oklahoma. So like Texas, [31:37] Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, et cetera. And, um, and, and they were mostly STEM students. [31:47] So you were not their major. No, absolutely not. [31:50] So this was a program that they did parallel to their major. [31:53] Yeah. I mean, I think this was like a sort of stroke of genius on the part of the president [31:58] who sort of saw an honors college as a really great way to recenter liberal learning within [32:04] general education. Because the, the point is to give that general education, that liberal foundation [32:11] upon which you can specialize, which is, you know, how the medieval university is structured. [32:17] Everybody goes through the arts curriculum before they can study theology or medicine or canon law. [32:23] Right. The real sciences. Um, but most gen ed requirements in American higher education [32:33] are not the most super rigorous things, right? So I'm just curious how students who were studying [32:39] mechanical engineering balanced that, you know, pretty rigorous course of study with the kind of like [32:46] intense communal Socratic style that you were trying to build. [32:52] Yeah. I mean, they loved it. I mean, is the, is the short answer, you know, [32:57] they would always say things like none of my other classes are like this, you know, um, [33:02] In a, in a positive way to be clear. In a positive way. [33:04] Yes. I mean, just sort of like, you kind of never know what's going to happen in an honors class, [33:08] um, which I think is part of the excitement, but there's a whole community of students outside [33:14] the seminar who are reading the same texts. And so you have this shared basis of learning, [33:19] but it's amazing to see the fruits that arise from that because they just go back to the dorm [33:24] and they're all kind of wondering like what was going on in Plato's symposium, [33:28] because it's a really strange text in so many ways. And, um, you know, they would, [33:34] they would spontaneously, uh, put on their own, their own symposium. [33:39] I think the secret sauce and honors really, um, wasn't, uh, the specific texts that we chose. [33:47] It was just sort of the community and the mission and the integration of those two things. And the [33:53] fact that even though it was really hard, it was where their friends were, right? So if you look at [33:59] the motto for honors, it was wisdom, virtue, friendship, which is like a very Aristotelian triad. [34:05] But the friendship thing was really key because, you know, for Aristotle, uh, the context in which, [34:14] uh, wisdom is sought, um, and virtue is cultivated and exercised is friendship. [34:19] So, you know, you're obviously a biased observer. You clearly loved and appreciated the thing you put [34:28] together. Yes. [34:29] Not everyone loved and appreciated it and it does not exist in the same way any, anymore. So what, what happened? [34:36] So, um, I mean, that's an interesting and complicated story and I've, I've certainly [34:42] talked about it elsewhere, but, um, you know, the, the short version is that, um, the president [34:50] who recruited me and hired me, um, and his provost, um, left. So there was a regime change and pretty [34:59] much as soon as a new provost was installed, um, I was just called in and said, you know, you're out. [35:06] And the honors would be restructured. And I obviously wanted to know why that would be the case. [35:14] Um, and I, I was just told, um, that they needed to save money. I mean, eventually they just found [35:22] other people to do it. So. [35:23] So the program still exists. [35:25] It still exists. [35:27] You're not in charge of it. [35:28] Correct. [35:29] And just give me, give me a theory of the case as to. [35:36] I mean, it would be speculative. Um, and so I, I hesitate to do that. [35:43] Well, let's, let's put it, let's put it this way. I, I feel like I, I would like to pull some [35:51] general lessons about why the challenges that the humanities face from your experience. [35:59] It's possible that your experience doesn't offer those lessons. And it was just, [36:03] just a matter of, you know, you were, let's say a favorite of an outgoing president [36:09] and a new regime didn't want to keep you around. And it was all sort of [36:13] just that kind of campus politics or faculty politics, or it's possible that this experience [36:19] tells us something about, um, why it's hard to build and sustain the humanities on college campuses. [36:28] So I think it's probably the second to some degree. [36:30] I do. I agree as well, um, with the caveat that obviously like it's speculative, um, on my part, [36:38] um, because, uh, I was given really zero, um, zero indication of what was really behind it. [36:47] Um, and I've not been privy to those conversations myself, but, uh, with that caveat, [36:53] I would say that we can learn a few things. One is that student interest and demand simply does not [36:59] matter. And, um, it's important to see that because, uh, I, I wrote an op-ed, uh, for the New York Times. [37:08] For the New York Times. People can read it. [37:09] Um, and, uh, my op-ed just basically said, hey, you know, there's the standard story [37:16] that students, um, can't do this and they don't want to do it. And I'm here to tell you that I think [37:23] that story is false. And I think we should talk about the fact that, um, it can be the case that [37:31] students want to do this, um, even though it's hard and very challenging and it's totally voluntary. [37:38] They don't have to do this. Um, and it can still be disinvested. I mean, so one clear implication [37:47] was that, you know, our budget was reduced by 92 percent, um, upon my leaving. And the faculty [37:53] that I have hired are gone. Okay. [37:55] In fact, literally everyone I hired is gone. [37:57] So it's like, there has to be some, what, ideological reason not to do it? What is the [38:02] reason not to do it if students are interested in it? [38:05] Ah, that's a, that's the million dollar question. [38:07] But we need, we need to, we need theories as to why you don't have to just be totally [38:12] specific about Tulsa, but I would like you to generalize a little bit based on your experience [38:19] about the kind of headwinds. And I mean, political headwinds, especially that a project like yours [38:26] faces. So I'll, I'll give you two, two theories, um, and ask, well, I guess I'll try and ask you to [38:34] react to both of them. Right. So here's one theory would be that fundamentally the academy [38:44] has adopted a kind of left wing perspective on, um, on the humanities that basically says [38:56] greatness, like, you know, everything that we were talking about in the beginning of this conversation [39:01] is just sort of a political construct associated with, you know, white male Western hegemony. [39:10] And that the point of the humanities, to the extent there is a point is to deconstruct [39:14] and challenge and critique that. And that's what we're doing. That's what the humanities is supposed [39:20] to do. Right. And therefore a program that says, no, long before you do that, you have to have this [39:26] direct encounter with ancient Greeks and medieval Christians and so on. Uh, that's just reactionary. [39:33] Right. And that doesn't have a place in the modern academy. Is there a part of the left that's just [39:38] sort of an enemy of the humanities as you understand it? Um, okay. So I think that, um, there are [39:45] definitely people within humanistic disciplines that understand what they do very explicitly as a [39:53] political project and it is a kind of radical left wing sort of thing. It's just a fact, no one can [39:59] deny it. Um, and so do those people love great books? Um, typically no. And so that's like a real thing. [40:09] I think though an actually bigger problem is the over professionalization and hyper specialization of [40:18] the humanities. So the biggest resistance that I found wasn't necessarily ideological, although that [40:25] existed, but it was this idea that you would teach us that syllabus. It was just like, no, I don't do [40:31] that. And so part of that was that's just not my expertise. Right. I teach from a place of expertise [40:39] and great books is like the opposite of that. Am I a classicist? No. Can I teach Homer? Yes. Because the [40:45] point isn't to create scholarship on Homer. That's not why we're there. If you wanted to do that, you [40:50] should definitely major in classics where you will be trained to create scholarship. But we are there [40:56] to have an encounter with that text, um, in a way that is more than just a book club sort of thing. It's [41:04] serious, but its goal is not sort of what Weber would call Wissenschaft, right? Um, its goal is more- [41:11] What is a Wissenschaft? Please. Scholarship. Yes. Thank you. [41:14] Like, and, um, so, so there was that sort of resistance, right? Like, I'm a literature scholar. [41:21] I can't teach philosophy or history and like, it's just not my thing. Um, and, and also I'm a literature [41:27] scholar and I have a very narrow ambit in literature where I'm here, I'm here to teach. Oh, for sure. [41:34] Victorian fictions in a, you know, anti-imperial or late imperial, you know, I'm in a very narrow frame of [41:41] what teaching literature means. Yes, exactly. Um, and so that is something that I want us to have a [41:48] conversation about is sort of the way that specialization, and really it's a conversation [41:54] about the way the institutional structure of the research university has disadvantaged the humanities [42:01] in particular. Because if expertise, if scientific expertise is the gold standard of knowledge, [42:09] which I think you can make a very strong case that that is the gold standard within the academy, [42:13] uh, the humanities really lose out, right? Because we're forced into a mold that maybe isn't, uh, the best [42:20] for our flourishing. And, um, so I, I think that's part of it. Yes, um, the hyperpolarization of all of [42:29] our institutions has hurt the humanities, but it's also obviously hurt the university generally. If you [42:37] look at, um, statistics of trust in institutions of higher education, they're catastrophically low. [42:43] I think it is simply a fact that one thing that has contributed to the loss of social trust is the [42:49] very strong perception that, uh, our institutions have been ideologically captured. And so we need [42:57] to reflect in a serious way, in a way that Yale, for example, is currently reflecting. Um, I think [43:03] the Yale report is a significant and interesting and an important document. I think most of its [43:09] recommendations are, are good ones, ones that need to be made. Um, so I'm very happy to talk about [43:16] higher education reform, but I think it needs to be done in ways that really kind of strive, uh, for the [43:24] common good, um, and less just about owning your enemies or dominating your enemies or winning the [43:31] culture wars. Um, that's not going to save the humanities. It's going to, it's going to just be [43:37] another nail in the coffin. Let, let's, let's just talk about a different kind of ideological pressure, [43:43] from, from, from the right. Sure. It seems that there's a way in which the right in America and [43:51] American culture has sort of two faces when it comes to the humanities. There's the face that [43:57] wants to be in the business of defending and saving what you're doing against both sort of woke academia [44:06] and hyper for professionalization, right? Like there's, there's a side of conservatism that just [44:13] people I've been in rooms with and spent years knowing and talking to just nods along with everything [44:18] that you say. Then there's also a really important side of conservatism that is just like, just is [44:26] totally bought into a sort of professional model of education, uh, that is skeptical of, um, anything [44:35] that seems like useless, useless degrees, right? The stereotype of the, you know, the, the reckless [44:43] graduate student who got the degree in puppetry and wants Joe Biden to bail, to bail them out, [44:49] right? Is, you know, it's a very powerful, very powerful on the American right. So I'm curious how [44:54] that, like you were in a red state, you know, you were at a school, probably with an unusual number [45:00] of Republican donors relative to, maybe not relative to other liberal arts schools. Like [45:04] which, which side of conservatism is more powerful? Is conservatism a friend of the liberal arts or an [45:11] enemy? I mean, what an interesting question. Yeah, it's a small, small question. I think I don't [45:16] need to tell you that, you know, conservatives are at war with one another about what conservatism really [45:22] is right now. So that also affects, you know, conservatism and education in all of its forms. [45:29] But I also think that there are disagreements about how to achieve higher education reform. But, [45:37] you know, to, to your specific question about utility versus leisure. Yeah, that's, that's, [45:45] that's question one. How much, how much utilitarian hostility do you feel like you get from people on [45:52] the right? I would say that you find this on the left and the right. So let us remember that it was the [45:59] Obama administration that rolled out the scorecard of majors. So this is really the, this kind of [46:07] utilitarian push is I believe bipartisan. Now, what you do see right now is red states like Utah and [46:17] Indiana and Ohio and Texas passing legislation, um, that disinvest or shuts down, um, departments that [46:28] don't have sufficient enrollment. And, you know, that has definitely hurt some, uh, well, quite a few [46:35] humanities departments, but like it's also brought down physics and math. So it's a, it's a very blunt [46:43] instrument. But in all of those cases, what you will find is a rationale that says we need workforce [46:49] alignment. Um, and we need to have sort of like work ready graduates. So there, there is that. And [46:57] I think, I think if you, but you, but, but, but you, but you, but you sent your, you sent your program [47:02] up at Tulsa, it seems like in an effort to actually kind of try and preempt that kind of critique to say, [47:09] look, we can have liberal arts education that works in parallel with pre-professional education. [47:15] You don't have to major in classics to get some kind of classical encounter. Correct. And I still, [47:21] I mean, I, I still fundamentally believe that and I'm dedicated to that. Yeah. Right. But that didn't [47:26] save you. No. Yeah. What, what about the question that you just mentioned of this argument on the [47:34] right about how you get sort of effective change in higher ed. Right. So I, to prior guests on this [47:43] program have included, um, recently, I've watched them all recently, former, you don't have to say [47:50] that you've got, you've got, you know, more important texts to encounter, but former U S Senator Ben Sasse, [47:56] who was at the university of Florida, um, and worked on a program that was set up by the Republican state [48:04] government of Florida. Yeah. Uh, designed not just to be about the liberal arts, but in part to sort of [48:11] have a strong liberal arts tradition within a public university. I've also interviewed a while ago now, [48:19] Christopher Ruffo. Right. And so leading, leading right wing activist who just takes the straightforward [48:25] view that conservatives inside academia are totally deluded if they think they're going to get anywhere [48:31] without Republican state legislatures or Donald Trump coming in and saying to schools, you have to [48:37] teach great books or Western civilization and so on. So sass is a gentle voice. Ruffo is a harsher voice, [48:45] but they're both, they're both figures who, who see, I think a pretty substantial role for politics in [48:54] making a place for the humanities in higher ed. Yeah. What's your take on that view? I mean, [49:03] I think that when we're talking about public institutions, um, it's obviously political [49:08] and it's very difficult to avoid this reality. Um, however, I will say a few things, you know, [49:16] there was a large scale disinvestment from states, uh, after 2008. And so the case is a little bit weaker. [49:27] But just on the disinvestment front, are, are you suggesting basically that, [49:32] that like red state governments will maybe set up a school for civic engagement or civic thought or [49:39] something that presents itself as sort of a place to preserve the humanities, but meanwhile, [49:46] they're cutting the humanities everywhere else? I mean, that's a possibility. Yeah. [49:51] Um, you know, the civic center movement, it's a relatively new movement. Um, I definitely support it, [49:58] um, but it's not going to save the humanities. Um, the way that the civic centers are structured is [50:06] they understand themselves as, um, homes of disciplinary knowledge and expertise, right? [50:13] Um, and civics, like, is, is meant to be a, a specific kind of expertise. And that's great. I don't, [50:21] like, you know, uh, the more the merrier. I don't have any, I, I certainly have no problem with [50:28] legislators, um, investing in Hamilton or the School of Civic Leadership and things like this. [50:35] Um, now we can have a separate conversation about, you know, how they're being run and things like that, [50:40] but a, but a great book's education is, is on its face sort of simultaneously a liberal and a civic [50:47] education. Um, and so, of course, I support movements, um, that seed that in our universities [50:55] and give them money. Um, but I, I don't think it's going to save the humanities. Um, the only thing [51:02] that might save the humanities is really, um, getting serious and recentering undergraduate education [51:11] again. Um, and institutionally speaking, like, we're not set up to do that. The research university [51:17] is set up to incentivize research. Um, how do we make general education liberal again? Right? In that [51:26] classical sense. That's what I'm going to be doing next in my career. Um, I believe that we've really [51:33] dropped the ball when it comes to general education in this country. Um, students have no sense that their [51:41] education is anything other than this externalized instrumental means to an end. Um, we have to look [51:50] at how to recover that first. And honestly, we should, I'm not saying that we actually can, but like, [51:57] we should be able to do that in a bipartisan way. Um, but we have to have people on both sides willing to [52:07] kind of stop culture warring and find common ground. And that is something that is very difficult to do [52:15] in our hyperpolarized political environment. And practically speaking, you know, a concern that I [52:22] have is that the civic centers will just be seen as conservative outposts. Um, then it's like, it's a [52:30] missed opportunity. I mean, something that was pretty magical about what we did in Tulsa is that we did [52:37] actually have, uh, a lot of viewpoint diversity and difference of experience. And that was [52:43] definitely reflected in our faculty. That was important to me in hiring faculty. And, um, we [52:50] work, we worked a lot, a whole lot explicitly on having difficult and important conversations across [52:58] deep differences. Differences of experience, differences of first principles, differences of [53:04] visions of how to live and what's good. And I think the thing that I'm most proud about, honestly, [53:09] is how wonderful that little experiment went. Except again, for the fact that it ended, right? [53:16] Well, sure. Well, but, but so, but then is, but then is, is the fundamental challenge that [53:26] universities see themselves as businesses? And you, you know, you were making the case earlier that [53:35] students want it, it can be cost effective. You can do it while, right? While students are also [53:42] majoring in electrical engineering, but we were around the unit, right? But the, but the university, [53:47] the university mindset right now in a time where, again, there's going to be fewer students, [53:54] lots of universities are going to be closing, right? Might be show me how this yields the maximum [54:02] number of graduates in the most remunerative jobs who then will give money to the university, right? [54:09] I mean, it seems like even more than sort of professionalization or politics, maybe that's [54:15] the mindset that, that you're up against where it's like people, people might tolerate you, but [54:20] if you can't tell a story about how reading Aristotle leads you to get an extra promotion that leads to [54:28] more donations down the road, at best, you're going to be tolerated. You're never going to be a priority. [54:34] Well, yeah, but I mean, that's the sort of disease that I'm trying to diagnose, but it, [54:38] again, it's bipartisan. So, in the state that I currently reside in, Oklahoma, our governor recently [54:49] put out two executive orders, both relating to higher education. One of them sort of effectively ends [54:55] tenure at public institutions except for OU and OSU. But the other one says that all academic review [55:05] needs to be done in terms of workforce readiness, like we'll look at wages earned and things like this, [55:12] and we'll do academic review on that basis. So that's, you know, just going to be something that's [55:18] mandated. But the other interesting aspect of the executive order is that it asks the state's [55:24] Board of Regents to investigate a 90-credit-hour degree. So basically get rid of most of general [55:32] education. And I mean, that's- [55:34] So you get a degree that's purely, [55:37] purely training. [55:38] Yeah. [55:38] Purely training. [55:39] Workforce training. [55:40] Yeah. Just get rid of all of that other stuff, you know, which is nonsense. And so, [55:47] yeah. And it puts me in an interesting position because I, myself, am critical of general education. [55:54] I think that we've dropped the ball. We've failed there. But I would ask people to reform [55:58] that rather than get rid of it. [56:00] Right. [56:00] Yeah. Last question. [56:01] Yes. [56:02] Small question. [56:03] Sure. [56:03] What does AI do to any of this? [56:05] Yeah. Yeah. AI. I don't know. I go back and forth about AI and thinking that, you know, [56:13] it's the apocalypse. And then also noticing that, like, it can't even do an index of my book. So, [56:19] you know, I think I'll worry more about AI when it can index my book. But I will say, [56:27] I think that AI is obviously going to change every single institution in this country, [56:34] including, obviously, institutions of higher education. And it will do things to the labor [56:38] market that I think are going to be pretty wild. I mean, there's a huge sign outside the Times [56:44] building that says, Stop Hiring Humans. You see it, right, when you come out of the pool. I'm sure [56:49] you've noticed. [56:50] I've noticed. There's also the Jude Law. There's a billboard that is using Jude Law to sell [56:56] legal AI. [56:57] Yes. [56:57] Yes. [56:57] Like, that's the one, for some reason, that sticks in my mind. But yes, Stop Hiring Humans. [57:02] Yeah. Stop Hiring Humans. Now, why Stop Hiring Humans? Well, like, the obvious reason is because [57:07] to err is human, right? We make mistakes. And obviously, AI makes mistakes too. But I think that [57:16] the problem of sort of labor displacement leads people to make the wrong case for the humanities [57:23] in an age of AI. So what you hear people saying now, and these are like tech industry leaders, [57:29] but they're also like deans at prominent schools that say, Well, because AI is changing the workforce [57:38] in such and such a way, we now need the humanities for these soft skills that are now incredibly [57:44] important. And, I may have said that to myself contemplating my own children's future. Yes. [57:50] Yes. This is the exactly the wrong case to make for the humanities because it denatures and destroys [57:57] the thing that it's supposed to be promoting, right? If, again, liberal arts education, humanities [58:04] education is just workforce training, you're not actually going to be able to fully benefit from [58:13] the thing that you've instrumentalized. So I would say rather- Just in defense, though, [58:20] of my own parental lizard brain, right? The work is a real part of human affairs, right? It's not some [58:31] area where you cease to be human when you're at your job or relating to your co-workers or handling [58:37] your producers who may be concerned that an interview has gone on too long, hypothetically, [58:42] right? Yes. It is a zone of real and important human interaction. And if you say one thing that [58:50] the humanities do is prepare you to exist in a corporate environment, at a technology company, [58:59] at a startup, at the New York Times, you aren't saying something that's completely different from [59:04] Cicero saying the humanities prepare you to be a Roman citizen, right? I'm just saying there's a form of [59:12] the humanities prepare you to work that I think is compatible with your understanding of the [59:17] humanities. Well, I mean, what I would rather say- Let me circle back to that in a minute. But [59:22] what I would rather say is that AI is good for the humanities because it clarifies in an especially [59:32] forceful way what is at stake if we stop being invested in this project of cultivating our own [59:41] humanity and we give ourselves over to the robots and the machines, right? Because what the machines [59:50] can't really do well, and that quite frankly, I think we don't want them to do well, [59:56] is to think about what our ends and our goals are. Like we don't want them to define for us, [1:00:03] right? What we're aiming for. And the humanities, when done well, right? Real humane learning is an [1:00:11] investigation into what the goal of human society is. And so I think that what AI really clarifies is [1:00:21] the absolutely fundamental existential cultural need for humane learning. And because it makes it [1:00:29] so clear that if we give up our thinking to machines, what will be left, right? We will just be a bundle [1:00:40] of desires, right? That are coming from outside. And we will be a kind of slave to them. We will not [1:00:48] really in any meaningful sense be free. I don't care what the political system is. If you haven't done [1:00:54] that work of deep, humane reflection and self-cultivation, you are not really engaged in that [1:01:02] project of becoming a person. And so when I talk to students about using AI in the class, I don't talk [1:01:08] about how I'm going to punish them. Because one, it's like impossible to prove. And two, like I'm not [1:01:13] actually interested in punishing them. What I remind them of in very clear terms is that if they outsource [1:01:21] their thinking, they're simply outsourcing their own humanity. And like, you can do that, but I think [1:01:26] you'll regret it. Because now is the time given to you to really invest. And God help us, robots are [1:01:34] taking over in areas that, you know, we might want to really question whether they should take over, even [1:01:40] if it does mean accepting more error. If we can't think about our own humanity, I just think we're, we're so [1:01:48] on the road to dystopia and a result that none of us is going to like or appreciate. And I think [1:01:55] that artificial intelligence just makes that very clear. And in that respect, I'm grateful for it. [1:02:00] I don't think there could be a better place to end. So Jennifer Frey, [1:02:04] thank you so much for joining me. Yeah, thanks for having me.