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.