From Harvard's big new official report on the decline in undergraduates choosing to study the humanities — i.e. history, English — rather than more "practical" fields such as computer science or economics:
Those of us committed to criticism as critique might recognize a kernel of truth in conservative fears about the left-leaning academy. Among the ways we sometimes alienate students from the Humanities is the impression they get that some ideas are unspeakable in our classrooms. Confusingly, these may be ideas that they have heard from their parents around the dinner table, from the pulpit in their houses of worship, or from the media to which they have been exposed. It is not that as teachers we should pretend to speak from some point of uninflected objectivity, but that we should admit and mark the fact that opinions and orientations shape our thinking; acknowledge the fact that intelligent people may disagree; and encourage real debate rather than answers our undergraduates are smart enough to know we want to hear.
