Director, @AmericanAcad's humanities, arts, and culture programs; Humanities Indicators (https://xitter.cf/t.co/oskRdC7YrU); and D.C. office. Quotes and RTs ≠ opinions.
Washington, D.C.
Joined May 2009
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New: "if you care about your students and the future of the #humanities... You need to engage with AI, understand both its appeal and its limitations, and integrate that awareness into your teaching." bit.ly/4y9LM2V
"The job market for humanities scholars may be bleaker than ever—except for the handful of academics who specialize in the philosophy of artificial intelligence." bit.ly/4zGHbq1
“We should value and uphold the humanities more than we do already...Not in a way that discounts STEM and science, but in a way that makes them equal.” bit.ly/4B6p3as
"Stanford students in particular, he said, are wary of the absence of a clear career “escalator” in the humanities — a predictable, linear pathway to employment." bit.ly/4j9uKhi
"Its possible that in another 10 years time, the #humanities will have proven resurgent — remaining the domain of humans rather than computers." bit.ly/4yyl0lu
"Many of us in the professional schools simply could not do our work without this foundational scaffolding from the humanities." bit.ly/4y6abWK
"Things will go wrong, so we need problem-solving; people will live together, so we need collaboration; people will disagree, so we need empathy and conflict resolution; and we need resilience. The humanities prepare us for all of these." bit.ly/475xi8Z
“I think #humanities have a better story to tell than most other fields in response to what AI is doing... We [humanities majors and graduates] fill in a major gap, a weakness of AI.” bit.ly/4yqAeZR
Slides for my talk at St. John's University on the value of humanities skills in the workforce are now available at bit.ly/4hTHhnS (LinkedIn). Happy to share if you would like the original slide deck.
“The ability to formulate an argument, the ability to evaluate an argument, the ability to read a bit of text and extract an argument from that text; I think these are really skills that … are going to come in handy” bit.ly/47gO70E
“AI has not rescued the humanities. What it has done is reveal, with unusual clarity, what happens when societies allow the institutions that cultivate judgement to erode.” bit.ly/4d3OWxd
New: Focus groups and interviews with young people (bit.ly/3V50oTf) and the secondary teachers and counselors (bit.ly/4hjtkOE) who work with them provide important insights into how the #humanities fit into students' educational journeys and development.
“Many students just don’t feel comfortable with long-form reading that they’d do in an English or history class... If students don’t feel comfortable with text, they’re more likely to be attracted by something that doesn’t require them to do that reading.” bit.ly/4rw2bge
"College should prepare us for the world, but most of all prepare us to live. If universities keep pushing humanities to the sidelines because they may not be as profitable as other fields, we risk forgetting the purpose of education." bit.ly/3TMocLa
"The emerging conventional wisdom: In the age of AI, human skills such as creativity, communication and collaboration could provide a crucial professional edge, whatever the field." bit.ly/4ydZr9K
"Enrolment in #humanities courses is holding up in the UK despite concern about their supposed declining popularity in an employability-focused environment": bit.ly/4dD0JCL
Slides for my talk at Coastal Carolina are now posted at bit.ly/4h74zoJ (on LinkedIn). If you can't download, or just want the PowerPoint version, please don't hesitate to ask.
"This future will be one of our own making as we professors erode the basics of humanities instruction and assessment to keep LLMs from turning writing assignments into opportunities to offload work." bit.ly/46ZGlYW
"Townsend said colleges and universities could address those concerns by making the skills students develop through humanities courses more explicit, including research, writing, and communication skills." bit.ly/4h7xZDg
"While artificial intelligence is making it easier to generate text and information, skills traditionally associated with the #humanities—including critical reading, writing and analysis—could become more valuable." bit.ly/3T6LN8Y
"The humanities, the arts, they allow you to do the critical thinking. They allow you to think about what are the stories that are going to resonate with this population or this population. That’s human creativity. Currently, AI can’t replace that." bit.ly/4AaYvnW
