A new Vanderbilt–WashU report warns that parts of the humanities and social sciences have abandoned the pursuit of truth.
In April, Yale University released a report exploring why Americans have lost trust in higher education. Widely discussed at the time, the report was notable not so much for what it said as for who said it. Many of its conclusions—for instance, that the “high tuition-high aid” model invites distrust—were fairly obvious. The Yale report mattered because it was a Yale report, marking a rare moment of self-reflection by an elite university.
Now, another report offers further self-reflection, but with far greater substance. Last week, Vanderbilt University and Washington University in St. Louis released a jointly commissioned report on the “state of scholarship” in the humanities and social sciences. The report takes on a question closely related to higher education’s crisis of trust: has scholarship itself been politicized or otherwise degraded?
While hedging considerably, the report’s authors land on a clear thesis: a noteworthy contingent of contemporary scholars subordinates the pursuit of knowledge to political and social goals. These goals, the authors note, “are generally though not exclusively associated with the progressive left,” and involve “turning the humanities into vehicles for social justice, or the elimination of pernicious social hierarchies,” as manifested in causes such as anti-racism, feminism, and decolonization.
Despite identifying this progressive trend, the report’s committee is not recognizably conservative. It is composed of mainstream academics. That includes several philosophers from New York University—widely considered one of the world’s best philosophy departments—along with notables like NYU history professor Katherine Fleming, who is also president of the $8-billion J. Paul Getty Trust.