‘Just not monetizable’: humanities programs face existential crisis at US universities

Last month, students at Montclair State University in New Jersey held a mock funeral outside the university’s college of humanities and social sciences building. Carrying bouquets of flowers, they stood by a tombstone inscribed with the names of the school’s 15 departments, including English, history and sociology.

“We are gathered here today, in front of the humble home of CHSS, Dickson Hall, to mourn the death of the social sciences and humanities at the hands of the MSU administration,” Miranda Kawiecki, a junior at the college and one of the protest’s organizers, read from a written eulogy. “I coordinated this demonstration because I have dreams that cannot be monetized. I have a problem with our society that cannot be solved with an algorithm. I have words to write and say that cannot be generated artificially.”

The mock funeral was a protest against the university administration’s plan to overhaul the college by consolidating its departments into four thematic schools – including one devoted to “human narratives and creative expressions”, encompassing what was previously taught in the English, classics, languages and Latino Studies departments, among others.

Fears over the future of the humanities aren’t limited to New Jersey’s second-largest public university. At many schools, those fears are existential.