ArtsCommission.org

This past October, George Philips, president of SUNY New York, announced his decision to elimiate five important departments in the humanities: French, Italian, Russian, Classics and Theater Arts, citing these departments as not bringing in enough money for the university. In response to this decision, Gregory A. Petsko, Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Brandeis University wrote a brilliant and passionate letter to Philips. In his letter Petsko makes a brilliant case for a thorough education for all students, giving numerous examples of the relevance of exposure to the great literature, thought and arts that are now unavailable to students at SUNY. He also does an excellent job of explaining the difference between a university and a trade school, and why universities, as they have been traditionally understood and administered, are essential to maintaining our knowledge and culture.excerpted:Let's examine these and your other reasons in detail, because I think if one does, it becomes clear that the facts on which they are based have some important aspects that are not covered in your statement. First, the matter of enrollment. I'm sure that relatively few students take classes in these subjects nowadays, just as you say. There wouldn't have been many in my day, either, if universities hadn't required students to take a distribution of courses in many different parts of the academy: humanities, social sciences, the fine arts, the physical and natural sciences, and to attain minimal proficiency in at least one foreign language. You see, the reason that humanities classes have low enrollment is not because students these days are clamoring for more relevant courses; it's because administrators like you, and spineless faculty, have stopped setting distribution requirements and started allowing students to choose their own academic programs - something I feel is a complete abrogation of the duty of university faculty as teachers and mentors. You could fix the enrollment problem tomorrow by instituting a mandatory core curriculum that included a wide range of courses.Young people haven't, for the most part, yet attained the wisdom to have that kind of freedom without making poor decisions. In fact, without wisdom, it's hard for most people. That idea is thrashed out better than anywhere else, I think, in Dostoyevsky's parable of the Grand Inquisitor, which is told in Chapter Five of his great novel, The Brothers Karamazov. In the parable, Christ comes back to earth in Seville at the time of the Spanish Inquisition. He performs several miracles but is arrested by Inquisition leaders and sentenced to be burned at the stake. The Grand Inquisitor visits Him in his cell to tell Him that the Church no longer needs Him. The main portion of the text is the Inquisitor explaining why. The Inquisitor says that Jesus rejected the three temptations of Satan in the desert in favor of freedom, but he believes that Jesus has misjudged human nature. The Inquisitor says that the vast majority of humanity cannot handle freedom. In giving humans the freedom to choose, Christ has doomed humanity to a life of suffering.Read the rest of "A Faustian bargain."The spectre of an underexposed, trade-school educated populace is horrifying, and particularly as it applies to the future of the arts. There will be artists, but will there be patrons? this is important to any of us involved in the arts, as we find increasing competition for resources, and the continuing degradation of broad education in the arts among ALL people, not just students majoring in the humanities. A university education is not job training. It is the time and place where we gain a broad exposure to the vast scope of human understanding and human experience.