The Humanities in American Life: Report of the Commission on the Humanities

University of California Press

Sharing with many people a profound disquiet about the state of the humanities in our culture, the Rockefeller Foundation decided in April 1978 to sponsor a Commission on the Humanities to assess the humanities' place and prospects. Richard W. Lyman, then president of Stanford University, agreed to chair the Commission. Its members were appointed during the summer of 1978 and met five times from September 1978 to January 1980.

The Commission was assembled fourteen years after a similar commission—sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies, the Council of Graduate Schools in the United States, and the United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa—had recommended the establishment of a National Humanities Foundation. The two Commissions have much in common. Both affirm the importance of the humanities and seek to heighten awareness of a national interest. Both call for continuous support of the humanities from public and private sources. Both recognize the interdependence of the humanities, social sciences, sciences, and technology. Unlike the earlier Commission, however, we do not propose the creation of a major agency. We offer a profile of the humanities in American education and public life—their contributions and weaknesses—and we recommend means for strengthening them over the next decade. Some of our thirty-one recommendations

seek increases in financial support during what is sure to be a period of economic austerity. Others can be achieved with available resources. All require that we reconsider the importance of the humanities to our national culture and to the spirit of our lives.

The Commission's staff conducted research in part by communicating with educational and cultural institutions, professional associations, federal offices, commissions and task forces on issues related to the humanities, and with other groups and individuals. Our thanks go to the many who replied; the thoughtfulness of their responses reflects a broad concern for the future of the humanities. Members of the staff collected information on scores of humanistic pursuits. Although they made few site visits and did not attempt to evaluate these activities thoroughly, we have named some of the many examples that came to our attention (examples are identified in the text by a boldface dot at the beginnings of paragraphs in which they are discussed) in order to illustrate diverse forms of learning in the humanities. We decided early in our deliberations that one of the major problems of the humanities lies in the general deterioration of secondary education. We therefore called upon John Goodlad, Leroy Lovelace, and Phillip Woodruff to counsel us on matters pertaining to the schools. We are grateful to them for their eloquent advice, as we are to Richard Macksey for his reflections on the relationships among the humanities, social sciences, sciences, and technology.

We must record here with great sadness the tragic deaths, during the period of the Commission's work, of two people who were significantly connected with that work from the outset. John H. Knowles, M.D., president of the Rockefeller Foundation, died in Boston on March 6, 1979, after an illness of several weeks, at the age of fifty-two. No one who knew John Knowles's ebullience and wit, his energy and breadth of interests, and the passionate concern for human progress that he brought to his work at the Foundation can fail to mourn such a loss. Charles Frankel, Old Dominion Professor of Philosophy and Public Affairs at Columbia University and first president of the National Humanities Center in North Carolina, was a distinguished member of this Commission at the time he and his wife were murdered in May 1979 in their home in

Bedford Hills, New York. The death of Charles Frankel—philosopher, academic statesman, and public citizen—deprives the humanities of one of their most brilliant and stimulating spokesmen.

We wish to express our gratitude to the Rockefeller Foundation for its generous and constant support of this inquiry. Stanford University provided a home for our staff and extended them every courtesy. At the University of California Press, William McClung and Marilyn Schwartz edited the manuscript with insight and care. Finally, we thank Gaines Post, Jr.—associate professor of history on leave from the University of Texas at Austin—and his colleagues on the staff, Steven Young, Ellen Woods, Virginia Newton, and Donna Pinto. Theirs was the major task of putting together a report out of the great variety of materials considered and sometimes disparate views expressed.

May 9, 1980

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