The humanities have been the target of numerous attacks on higher education over the past decade. The fields encompassed by that title — history, philosophy, literature, cultural and gender studies and the arts, to name a few — have been criticized as politically motivated, unserious, non-lucrative and therefore, useless. Of course, these concerns are bolstered by the seeming ubiquity of artificial intelligence among college students, such that the work these students carry out appears to some capable of being completely, or in large part, outsourced.
In response, defenders of the humanities often point to the empathy garnered by literature and cultural studies, how the humanities make us human and how art enriches the soul. These are necessary defenses to attacks specifying “uselessness.” It also seems clear that much criticism decrying the humanities as politically motivated tends to be — ironically — politically motivated. But defending the humanities from external attacks should not prevent us from examining them internally. It’s important to look inward at the question of seriousness — humanities education has a rigor problem.
This is not to say that the humanities are intrinsically easy — indeed, the questions they pose about life, culture and society are among the most vital and timeless questions we can tackle, subjects worthy of intense debate and analysis. But professors nationwide have lamented students’ refusal or inability to actually read and analyze assigned texts. Indeed, some studies — including one by Mary Hoeft, professor emeritus of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Barron County — suggest that students frequently neglect readings within humanities courses. Facing this barrage of issues, how might students and instructors alike remind ourselves of the humanities’ potential for not just compassion and cultivation of the senses, but academic rigor?
Humanities subjects, by their nature text-based, argumentative and often lacking singular answers, require especially rigorous expectations surrounding reading, writing and intellectual accountability — the responsibility to justify claims with evidence and sound reasoning.
The neglect of readings is the first issue from which many others follow. In math courses, students complete problem sets, and in science courses, pre-labs. For humanities students, the bulk of intellectual labor is reading, interrogating, drawing conclusions and writing. These readings can often be summarized, be it by AI, entire sites dedicated to written summaries or video content — but there is value in the act of reading. The aim of assigning readings is not to merely understand the texts’ conclusions but to think along with them, to wrestle with their arguments, nuances and ambiguities. Interpretation demands attention, patience and judgment, skills that cannot be outsourced without losing the very exercise the discipline is meant to cultivate.
At times, discussion sections can mask this failure and serve as a substitute for real, meaningful engagement with lecture and reading content. Who has not sat in an early morning discussion, pained by its repetition, points that never advance or tangential commentary? Frequency of contribution is weighted heavily in many courses, which fills silence but does not always translate to immersion. With vague or merely numerical standards for participation, discussion sessions — spaces for clarifying lecture content, working out ambiguities in readings, debating and increasing understanding — can drift from their intellectual goal. The solution may not be to reinvent discussion sections, but to rethink what they reward. A more rigorous model may, for instance, evaluate contributions based on textual anchoring as well as both citation and intellectual progression, so that discussions focus and deepen in evaluation.
The question of subjectivity also poses some challenges in addressing the problem of rigor. The subjective nature of the humanities means that discourse, competing perspectives and argumentation will prove a fair share of course and discussion content. Memorization, at the college level, should rarely be the sole metric of learning or success. Open dialogue is necessary for intellectual exploration, growth and risk. Disagreement should be encouraged. Yet, openness to multiple interpretations should demand more, not less, evidentiary rigor. If any interpretation is potentially defensible, then students must learn to defend theirs through close reading, textual evidence, historical context and logical argument. Rigor is necessarily relocated, not eliminated.
It is understandable that concerns surrounding AI use should change how professors assign work. However, if students can complete a class without any reading, writing or close textual engagement, AI has exposed a pedagogical flaw, not created one. If AI use is a concern with take-home essays, and if students fail to complete readings, courses could place more emphasis on in-class writing, revision processes, close textual analysis, oral arguments and targeted discussion, which make interpretive thinking visible in real time. If the lack of hard deadlines creates the perception that readings are inessential, then courses can utilize reading checks, activities centering on readings and in-class written responses on set dates. It is not a call for more work, per se, but one for greater accountability for the work that constitutes the course. However, while incentives can shift behaviors, challenges cannot fall solely on instructors. It is also up to us, as students, to decide whether we would like to meaningfully engage with the work that defines a humanities education.
The humanities are absolutely indispensable. They indeed make us human, bolster our empathy and teach us essential skills in critical analysis, comprehension and communication. But they are also incredibly rich fields of study, and at times intense and challenging — qualities that emerge through sustained engagement with texts. Their benefits arise from doing the difficult work of reading closely, thinking carefully and arguing from evidence.
The preservation of their rigor is essential. It is not merely a matter of what we memorize, but how we think, accumulate knowledge, build global awareness and put our learning to practice in shaping the world and systems around us. If the humanities are worth defending — and they certainly are — they are also worth taking seriously. It is time we reaffirm the demanding intellectual practices that make them so valuable in the first place.
Grace Clippinger is an opinion columnist who writes about politics for The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at opinion@cavalierdaily.com.
The opinions represented in this column are not necessarily those of The Cavalier Daily. Columns represent the views of the authors alone.
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