Amity Shlaes on the perversion of the humanities in higher education

What has happened in the past is that we neglected the humanities. Or we added humanities into cirricula in token fashion, and gave humanities instructors too much license.  Those responsible focused on the hard stuff and said - oh, humanities are subjective, let the teachers do what they like, or the textbook authors do what they like.  Scientists tend to abdicate when it comes to humanities.  If a teacher told us he or she was teaching US history, the scientists or other stakeholders said, That sounds fine, and did not scrutinize the actual syllabus.  Had they done so, they would have been shocked in the dramatic shift of what books and what ideas are being taught.  Most Americans, my guess is, have little understanding of the extent to which identity politics have come to supplant standard history in instruction, whether college or high school.  That's why the Woke Revolution is proving such a rude shock.

~ Amity Shlaes, "2020: The 1960s Redux?," The Austrian, July-August 2020