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Commentary: GOP debate made it clear that cutting humanities from universities is a danger to humankind
By Charles McNulty
Theater Critic
Aug. 24, 2023 4:32 PM PT
(snip)
Hypocrisy in a primary debate is nothing new, but its flagrancy has reached a calamitous level. How has character come to mean so little in American society? What has gone wrong in our collective education that liars who don’t even make a good faith effort to conceal their deceptions can command such an enduring hold on the populace?
Justice, Greek tragedy reminds us, requires a wide-angle view. The political actors onstage in Milwaukee wore their tragic flaws on their sleeves. The blind spots in their vision made Oedipus look like a seer, but it was a willful, manipulative blindness they were engaged in.
(snip)
The first Republican debate of the season took place in a world where literature, history and philosophy have been set aside as irrelevant. Critical thought was banished, and the pursuit of truth was forced to yield to the confirmation of biases and the promulgation of doctrines.
Universities making decisions about what departments to cut should take the long view before they accelerate this degradation of our nation’s capacity to examine, never mind govern, itself.
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2023-08-24/republican-debate-universities-cutting-humanities-danger