humanities

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Slight Decrease In US Philosophy Majors Continues

The number of students earning an undergraduate degree in philosophy in the United States declined for the third year in a row. (more…)

Some Advice about Applying for Interdisciplinary Humanities Fellowships and Grants

The National Humanities Center (NHC) recently announced its fellows for the 2026-27 academic year, and two philosophers are among them. (more…)

New Business School Centers Ethics in Its Curriculum and Marketing

Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business has revamped its MBA curriculum and has made ethics a focal point of its first-year curriculum. (more…)

Monmouth College Eliminating Its Philosophy Major

The President of Monmouth College, a private liberal arts college in Illinois, has recently announced that students at the school will no longer be able to major in philosophy, nor in a number of other subjects, starting in Fall 2026. (more…)

Teaching Humanities in the AI Era: Is this the Bargaining or the Acceptance Stage?

“What, again, is education? The non-coercive rearranging of desire.” (more…)

Kitcher Wins Frontiers of Knowledge Prize

Philip Kitcher, professor emeritus of philosophy at Columbia University, has been named the winner of the Frontiers of Knowledge Prize in the Humanities by the Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) Foundation. (more…)

The Multi-Day In-Class LockDown Browser Essay Assignment (guest post)

Many professors in philosophy and other disciplines believe that having students write take-home essays is important. Essays give students the opportunity to spend a lot of time pondering their topic, with ideas percolating in their brains over days, and students develop and exercise valuable skills throughout the thinking and writing and revising that goes into a g..

Explaining the Value of the Liberal Arts Requires More than Words

“The decline in liberal-arts disciplines is happening because, on many campuses, no one has taken ownership of explaining them.” (more…)

An Unexpected “Solution” to the Publishing Crisis?

What will the academic humanities look like in twenty years? (more…)

Appiah Wins Kluge Prize

Kwame Anthony Appiah, professor of philosophy and law at New York University, is the winner of the 2024 John W. Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity. (more…)

SUNY Potsdam Cuts: Further Details / Update: What You Can Do to Help (updated)

Last month we saw that the Philosophy program at SUNY Potsdam is once again under threat.

In the meanwhile, an unofficial philosophy site has been updated with some further information about the cuts.

(more…)

The AI Threat, the Humanities, and Self-Cultivation

“The humanities are… a gateway to and instigator of a lifelong activity of free self-cultivation. The changes they provoke in us are not always for the happier, or the more remunerative, or the more civically engaged, but when things go passably well, these changes are for the deeper, the more reflective, and the more thoughtful.” (more…)

Zero Philosophers Among New ACLS Fellows

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) has a prestigious fellowship program to recognize “excellence in humanistic scholarship”. It recently announced its new class of fellows. Not one of them is a philosophy professor. (more…)

AI, Teaching, and “Our Willingness to Give Bullshit a Pass”

There has been a fair amount of concern over the threats that ChatGPT and AI in general pose to teaching. But perhaps there’s an upside? (more…)

Recent Data About Philosophy PhDs

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has released some data about people who received PhDs in philosophy in the United States in 2021. (more…)

Philosophy Sees Decrease in PhDs Conferred In Recent Years

After a slow and steady increase from 1998 through 2011, the number of PhDs conferred in philosophy in the United States has been decreasing, according to a report from Humanities Indicators. (more…)

Philosopher Wins Fellowship for Work on Mass Incarceration

The Whiting Foundation has named Michael Burroughs, associate professor of philosophy and director of the Kegley Institute of Ethics at California State University, Bakersfield, as one of its Public Engagement Fellows. (more…)

What the Public Thinks of Philosophy and Other Humanities Fields

A new report from Humanities Indicators (a part of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences), based on a survey of over 5,000 U.S. adults, reveals and discusses various beliefs and attitudes the American public has towards the humanities, and includes information specifically about the public’s perception of and engagement with philosophy. (more…)

The Philosophy Major Is (Kind of) Back on the Rise (guest post by Eric Schwitzgebel)

New data shows a recent slight uptick in the percentage of undergraduates earning philosophy degrees. (more…)

Zena Hitz Wins 2020 Hiett Prize

Philosopher Zena Hitz, tutor at St. John’s College, is the winner of the 2020 Hiett Prize in the Humanities. (more…)

ACLS Fellowships & Philosophers

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) has announced the winners of some of its fellowships and grants, and there are some philosophers among them. But not many. (more…)

Faculty Non-Renewals, Staff Layoffs, and Threats to Philosophy at Ohio University

Ohio University (Athens, Ohio) has told at least 140 of its staff they will be laid off and has begun issuing non-renewal notices to both non-tenure and tenure-track faculty in an attempt to “grapple with a budget crisis that started even before the current coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.” (more…)

Two Philosophers Win National Humanities Center Fellowships

The National Humanities Center has announced its 2020-2021 residential fellows, and there are two philosophers among them. (more…)

A Way Philosophy Differs from the Other Humanities, or a Caricature of the Humanities?

Professors of the humanities make judgments about value. Art historians, literary scholars, musicologists, and classicists say to our students: These works are powerful, beautiful, surprising, strange, insightful. They are more worth your time and attention than others… Yet such judgment violates the principle of equality. So humanists have to pretend we’re not do..

Oxford Receives $189 Million Gift to Support the Humanities

Oxford University announced it has received a £150 million (approximately $189 million) “transformational investment in the way Oxford teaches, researches, and shares the Humanities.” (more…)