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Leon Wieseltier takes on Steven Pinker’s recent broadside against the Humanities (in defense of “scientism”)  in this week’s The New Republic. read here: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114548/leon-wieseltier-responds-steven-pinkers-scientism?a&utm_campaign=tnr-daily-newsletter&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=10174055

Colbert invites Richard Brodhead to his show to talk about The Heart of the Matter – the recent report on the state of the Humanities in the U.S. The study was conducted by a team of scholars, writers, politicians, CEOs and other dignitaries and coordinated by Brodhead. Watch here: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/428644/august-15-2013/richard-brodhead

Christina Paxson, economist and current president of Brown University, provides long-term economic and intellectual reasons for supporting the Humanities: read here: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114392/christina-paxson-president-brown-humanities-can-save-us?a&utm_campaign=tnr-daily-newsletter&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=10051186 *thanks to Daryl Lee for link

Mark Edmundson (professor of English, University of Virginia) pushes back against those touting the “marketable skills” of Humanities disciplines. Reaching back to Plato, Edmundson reminds us that the Humanities are ultimately about investigating the most meaningful and virtuous ways to conduct one’s life. He’s afraid that too much talk of Humanities and careers will hollow…

In an article in this week’s New Republic, Nora Caplan-Bricker reprises other recent articles by Nate Silver and Benjamin Schmidt to debunk the Humanities “decline” or “crisis” narratives. Most articles pointing to a current “crisis” are based on a dramatic decline in ‘degrees completed’ in the 1960s. Caplan-Bricker reminds us that a big reason for…

Based on a survey of major employers, Hart Research Associates find that a combination of technical and liberal arts training is highly valued. According to the study, “The majority of employers agree that having both field-specific knowledge and skills and a broad range of skills and knowledge is most important for recent college graduates to…

see here: http://www.businessinsider.com/logitech-ceo-bracken-darrell-loves-hiring-english-majors-2013-6

This article repeats some of the misinformation about the humanities in decline, but it does get this right: employers currently expect college grads to be prepared for the workplace right out of college. The old idea of on-the-job training is now called an internship, and students need to gain this experience while in college in…

Or: why philosophy is an excellent major. See here:  http://grasp.dk/why-future-business-leaders-need-philosophy/

There has been a burst of commentary this summer on the humanities crisis (or non-crisis), largely in response to two reports. One was conducted by Harvard University (found here) and the other by a national commission sponsored by the AAAS, titled The Heart of the Matter. Both reports sound alarm bells about the decline of…