Liberal Arts for Social Change

Ken Mondschein

doi:10.3390/h9030098

Abstract

The author makes a strategic argument for the liberal arts grounded in realpolitik (that is, the “realistic” manipulation of the levers of power). In a time of neoliberal university governance, it is useful for fields of study to base appeals for their continued existence on their utility to their institutions. The growth of equity and diversity initiatives in the academy, particularly in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, gives us a means of making this argument, as the liberal arts have utility in questioning the structures of white supremacy and received history and values. By exploiting the cognitive dissonance between the demands of neoliberal governance and the need for diversity and equity, we can make a persuasive case for reinvestment in the liberal arts. Further, this reinvestment ought to be democratized and carried out through all levels of higher education, including, and especially, non-selective, vocationally oriented institutions.

Highlights

The liberal arts have long been the shibboleth of the privileged and a tool for exclusion—a fact that will be of no surprise to anyone with even an undergraduate-level familiarity with Bourdieu’s writings on habitus (Bourdeau 1977)
My aim in this essay is to show how the cognitive dissonance inevitably produced by these two facts can and should be used as an argument for reinvestment in the liberal arts
I wish to show that reinvestment in the liberal arts in the name of racial justice is in the interest of those who hold power

Summary

Introduction

The liberal arts have long been the shibboleth of the privileged and a tool for exclusion—a fact that will be of no surprise to anyone with even an undergraduate-level familiarity with Bourdieu’s writings on habitus (Bourdeau 1977). For instance, has participated in this as well, such as the Marxist turn of the 1960s, the women’s and LGBTQ history that came to the fore in the 1970s and 1980s, and, more recently, the adoption of the “global Middle Ages” and CRT This does not mean, that there has been universally greater equity in professional ranks; in particular, the progress of African-Americans in securing tenure-track jobs has been called “snail-like” (Journal of Black Higher Education 2008–2009). Because college tuition in America is paid for privately (even the aforesaid Pell grants take the form of aid to individuals), there has been, simultaneously with the rise of the university-as-thought incubator, a call for tangible returns on investment This renewed emphasis on accountability and fiscal results in American education, coupled with the traditional vocational/liberal-arts divide, has renewed the debate over the value of the humanities. This gaze must be inward as well, since in reestablishing the liberal arts curriculum, we must critically evaluate and even rewrite what purposes theHigher “liberal arts” serve

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