Initiative for Humanities and Culture
The Academy's Initiative for Humanities and Culture completed an extremely
productive year with a series of workshops held at the House of the Academy on
December 7–8, 2000. Representatives of the Initiative's two major
components—the Research Program and the Humanities Indicators Program—came
together to refine and elaborate on their future plans and to learn about each
other's progress.
The December meetings focused in particular on two of the Research Program's
initial projects: "Histories of the Humanities Disciplines" and
"The Relationship Between the Sciences and the Humanities."
December Workshop I
Patricia Meyer Spacks (University of Virginia) and Steven Marcus (Columbia
University) convened a workshop to discuss the scope and content of a volume on
the post-World War II evolution of five selected disciplines: philosophy,
history, law, composition, and literature. Workshop participants agreed that
each of these disciplines demonstrates in its distinct way the processes of
change in the academic humanities and that further volumes would consider other
important fields, such as foreign languages and literatures, art history, and
the classics. The goal is to develop a new public concept of the humanities,
partly by describing how deeply these disciplines have influenced, and in turn
have been affected by, the social and cultural movements of the time.
Participants: Patricia Meyer Spacks and Steven Marcus, conveners; Tyler
Burge (UCLA), Andrew Delbanco (Columbia), David Hollinger (UC Berkeley), Linda
Kerber (University of Iowa), Jonathan Lear (University of Chicago), Andrea
Lunsford (Stanford University), Robert Post (Boalt Hall School of Law, UC
Berkeley), Jerome Schneewind (Johns Hopkins University), and Academy Executive
Officer Leslie Berlowitz, Daedalus Editor James Miller, and
Humanities Initiative consultant James Buzard.
December Workshop II
Mary Jo Nye (Oregon State University) conducted a second workshop dealing with
historical and contemporary perspectives on the changing relationship between
the sciences and the humanities. After reviewing a number of different
approaches, members of the group chose to develop a series of dialogues
focusing on how the insights of scientists and humanists on various
topics—including human behavior, symmetry and beauty, light, and music—enhance,
rather than compete with or contradict, each other. The dialogues would
commence at the House of the Academy, with subsequent presentations on
university campuses or at museums or libraries; radio broadcasts and videotapes
could be made available to a wider public.
Participants: Mary Jo Nye, convener; Svetlana Alpers (UC Berkeley/NYU),
Michael Friedman (Indiana University), Peter Galison (Harvard), Erwin Hiebert
(Harvard), Roald Hoffmann (Cornell University), James Johnson (Boston
University), Caroline Jones (Boston University), George Levine (Rutgers
University), Alan Lightman (MIT), Steven Marcus (Columbia), and Academy Program
Director Corinne S. Schelling.
The Humanities Indicators Program
In addition to these two intensive workshops, progress reports from
representatives of two other aspects of the Initiative were presented at a
joint session of all participants.
Calvin C. Jones (Statistical and Evaluation Research) reported on the work of
the Humanities Indicators Program. On November 7, 2000, Francis Oakley
(Williams College), Jonathan Cole (Columbia), Steven Marcus (Columbia), and
Robert Solow (MIT) convened a meeting of the Indicators Advisory Group in New
York to review the results of an evaluation of existing humanities datasets,
prepared by Mr. Jones. The report revealed a number of serious gaps and
inconsistencies in the information now available about the humanities, as well
as a marked lack of consistency in the way the information was obtained and
reported. Participants agreed to move forward with the development of a modest
set of indicators focusing on the academic enrollment and career patterns of
humanities concentrators, from the undergraduate level to the Ph.D. level, as
well as on the sources and extent of funding for the humanities. Working in
cooperation with other organizations involved in the collection of data, they
will also begin to seek ways to standardize definitions and methodologies for
long-term data collection.
Participants: Francis Oakley, Jonathan Cole, Steven Marcus, and Robert
Solow, conveners; John D'Arms (American Council of Learned Societies), Douglas
DeNatale (New England Foundation for the Arts), Denis Donoghue (NYU), Phyllis
Franklin (Modern Language Association), John Hammer (National Humanities
Alliance), Gerald Holton (Harvard), Arnita Jones (American Historical Society),
Calvin Jones (Statistical and Evaluation Research), Charlotte Kuh (National
Academy of Sciences/National Research Council), Joseph Meisel (Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation), Steven C. Wheatley (American Council of Learned Societies),
Kathleen Woodward (Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities), Leslie C.
Berlowitz, Corinne S. Schelling, and James Buzard.
The Public Understanding of the Humanities
On October 30, 2000, Bill Kovach (Committee of Concerned Journalists) convened
a meeting in Washington to consider "The Public Understanding of the
Humanities." Jointly sponsored by the Humanities Initiative and the
CCJ, this initial session brought together scholars, journalists, editors, and
government officials to discuss how the humanities are presented to, and
understood by, the wider public. The general consensus of the group was not
that the press has failed the humanities but that humanists have not seriously
considered the opportunities implicit in a closer relationship with the press.
A number of ways to sharpen and enhance the "identity" of the
humanities were proposed, including fellowships to enable young scholars and
reporters to research this topic, a series of open lectures or conferences
focusing on innovative work by scholars or new approaches to the teaching of
the humanities and culture within and beyond the university, and workshops to
ensure that scholars and advocates of the humanities are given the tools to
establish improved contacts within the journalism community.
Participants: Bill Kovach, convener; Thomas Avila (Committee of
Concerned Journalists), Ashley Carr (National Endowment for the Humanities),
Bill Dunlop (artist and writer), William Ferris (National Endowment for the
Humanities), Michael Janeway (Columbia), Arnita Jones (American Historical
Association), Barbara Matusow (Washingtonian), Tom Rosenstiel (Project
for Excellence in Journalism), Edward Rothstein (New York Times), Frank
Walton (Ruder Finn, Inc); Leslie Berlowitz, and James Buzard.
The December meetings not only advanced the individual projects of the
Humanities Initiative but also helped to ensure that the overall program will
have a coherent approach in working toward a goal of enhanced public
understanding of the value and purpose of the humanities in American life.
Committee on International Security Studies
John Steinbruner (University of Maryland) recently joined Carl Kaysen (MIT) as
cochair of the Academy's Committee on International
Security Studies (CISS). Currently professor of public policy at the
University of Maryland, Mr. Steinbruner is an internationally recognized expert
on global security issues and former director of foreign policy studies at the
Brookings Institution. At the fall meeting of CISS, Mr. Kaysen, Mr.
Steinbruner, and other committee members reviewed the progress of ongoing
studies and discussed new projects.
With a major grant from the Carnegie Corporation, CISS is in the early stages
of a three-year study of "Security in the
Post-Soviet Space." The project, directed by Robert Legvold
(Columbia), will result in the publication of five volumes examining various
issues of international significance in that region. In conjunction with the
project, CISS will convene a meeting this spring in Almaty, Kazakhstan, to
discuss the strategic stakes of the great powers in Central Asia.
Under Mr. Steinbruner's direction, CISS is sponsoring a study of the agreement
to establish in Moscow a US-Russian Joint Data
Exchange Center for early warning of missile launches. The committee
has convened two meetings at the Academy, including academic experts from the
United States, Canada, and Russia, as well as industry scientists and
government officials, to examine the agreement in detail. The study group plans
to issue its report in early 2001.
In September—in conjunction with the publication of the volume
The United States and the International Criminal Court, edited
by Sarah Sewall (Harvard University) and Carl Kaysen—CISS organized public
outreach activities in Washington, DC. These included a series of panel
discussions attended by over 150 government officials, service members,
academics, journalists, and activists; a press conference covered by US,
German, and Japanese news organizations; and congressional briefings.
CISS has also approved the development of proposals for projects on "The
Militarization of Space" and "Regional Security in the Middle
East."
New Editor of Correspondence
Correspondence, the international review of culture and society, was
created at the Academy four years ago by Daniel Bell, Henry Ford II Professor
of Social Sciences at Harvard. Sponsored by the Suntory Foundation of Japan,
the Wissenschaftskol-leg zu Berlin, and the Academy, it is now published under
the auspices of the Council on Foreign Relations, with Alexander Stille as the
new editor. Mr. Stille is a regular contributor to the New Yorker and
the author of three books, including the prize-winning work Benevolence and
Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families Under Fascism. He is now
completing a book titled The Future of the Past, which deals with the
ways different countries have been seeking to uncover or preserve their
antiquities with the aid of technology.
From the start, the purpose of Correspondence has been to strengthen the
international cultural community and to overcome, to the extent possible, the
specialization within disciplines and the parochialism among nations. The most
recent issue focuses on the technological challenge to the world press and the
vicissitudes of language in the global village. Copies may be obtained upon
request from Correspondence, Council on Foreign Relations, 58 East 68th
Street, New York, NY 10021.
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