What role do the humanities play In a world challenged by climate change, rising authoritarianism, censorship, racism, wars and collapsed economies?
The humanities and their forms of historical, visual and cultural literacy are critical to understanding and addressing the human experience and the planet’s survival, says Sara Guyer, dean of the Division of Arts and Humanities in UC Berkeley’s College of Letters and Science.
She should know: Guyer is director of the prestigious World Humanities Report, a major international study organized by the Consortium for Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) and commissioned by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the International Council of Philosophy and the Human Sciences (CIPSH). The report is complete today with the publication of her final director’s report.
“We live in a world and planet under duress. We are wanting for tools and concepts that foster change and help us live under these shared, if still uneven conditions,” Guyer writes in her report, which accompanies and summarizes the larger report, “… the humanities are of critical importance to that future.”
Launched in 2018, the World Humanities Report is the product of 230 scholars and writers whose documentation of the contributions and condition of the humanities in their parts of the world culminated in 115 essays, reports and case studies. It also includes 10 recommendations for how university, government, philanthropic, policy and other leaders can protect the humanities and prevent their extinction.
The strategies include investing in humanities research, protecting freedom of inquiry as a right, and preserving archives, languages and language study.
In this Q&A with Berkeley News, Guyer talks about the state of the humanities in different parts of the world, the conditions under which they persist, the risks to their disappearance and their “liberatory power.”