Chancellor Martin’s remarks at humanities grant announcement

These are the remarks made by Chancellor Biddy Martin at the announcement of the Mellon Foundation grant benefiting the humanities at the University of Wisconin-Madison:

Thank you everyone for being here. We’re particularly happy to have Gov. Jim Doyle and UW System President Kevin Reilly here today to help make a very important announcement about the humanities at UW–Madison.

I’m delighted to announce that the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded UW–Madison a $10 million grant in support of the humanities.  This grant is part of Mellon’s effort to preserve and enhance the humanities at public research universities with records of scholarly and educational excellence.

The grant, which will be matched by the state, is intended to support and sustain strength in core areas by allowing us to hire new faculty, and support postdoctoral fellows and graduate students.

This is a public-private partnership that leverages public funding, thereby enhancing the humanities and the university as a whole, and we are honored that the Mellon Foundation has chosen to partner with UW–Madison. This shows what it’s possible to do when we think creatively. We are incredibly grateful to Don Randel, president of the Mellon Foundation, for his vision and leadership, and to the Mellon Foundation Board for their generosity and their commitment to the humanities. I also want to thank Governor Doyle and President Reilly for helping to make the grant possible.

And now a word about the importance of the humanities.

The French-Algerian poet, Helene Cixous, once said, in a talk she gave here in Madison, Wisconsin, that the inability to read a poem puts us at risk of not being able to read the newspaper.

I don’t know whether that’s literally true, but I agree with the underlying premise.  The ability to read and think critically, to handle complexity, and to express ourselves effectively are critical to our freedom and our prosperity.  Unfortunately, some people have come to see the humanities as a luxury. I cannot think of a more dangerous assumption.

Some understand the importance of education in the humanities, but do not see the significance of research.

Let me put its importance in simple terms.  Think of it this way — what if you, as an individual, had no memory?  No record of your own history.  What if your use of language were not pliable, expressive, creative?  Think about a society without memory, without a sense of its history, without the ability to use language and other means of expression and communication.  

Now imagine that you have only memory and can do nothing more than mimic the past, robotically, or that you have no capacity for reflection or analysis, and no tools for developing your individuality. What about a society or societies of people who cannot think for themselves, transform their experiences and cultural heritage, or imagine more than they have already seen.  

Where do the tools for preserving, enhancing and reinventing language and culture come from? They come from scholarship and education in the humanities—in literature, art, music, anthropology, film, TV studies, studies of social media, studies of language and of language use, creative writing, history, interdisciplinary collaborations among humanists, social scientists and scientists.  

Science and technology are essential to our well-being and economic prosperity, but science and technology alone cannot explain the world or help us live in it wisely. We are, by nature, cultural beings.  We are learners. Our cultural environment shapes us. If we fail to understand how it shapes us, we forfeit our freedom and our responsibility to think about what we learn and who we are.  The humanities help us understand how value is established, why some things are valued and others are not.  They show us how dependent we can be on ingrained patterns of behavior, unexamined assumptions, ideological biases.  That understanding allows us to find balance between preservation and innovation, tradition and change.  

This grant is critical to our students, both graduate and undergraduate.  In the last five fall terms, from 2005 until 2009, approximately 23,000 seats were occupied by students in humanities courses each term, which means the university delivered about 69,000 credits per term to those students. This grant will help us hire faculty to teach those undergraduate students, but it will also provide critical support for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who are doing their own original research.