There are two things on my mind today, so completely unrelated that no amount of imaginative bridging will bring them together. They both have weighty implications, but of vastly different kinds.
Recently, the University of Chicago announced that it will not be accepting students in its Ph.D. programs in Humanities programs for the 26-27 academic year. There are two exceptions, not explained, for Philosophy and Music Composition. The move is billed as a “pause” while the University reevaluates its graduate programs, but such pauses have a way of extending themselves indefinitely.
For those of us who have always seen the UofC as a bastion of the Humanities, this announcement was a shocker. It’s true that most of the building boom around the campus in the three decades since we arrived has been science, computer or medicine-related, but I didn’t read that as signaling the demise of the Humanities. And maybe this “pause” doesn’t either. The University has grown a sizeable deficit, so perhaps we’re just seeing good management at work, though it feels more ominous than that.
The UofC is not alone among universities in cutting its offerings (primarily in Humanities and language studies) but these moves are not without their ironies. At the same time that the downgrading of the Humanities is unfolding, the job reports indicate high rates of unemployment among former computer science majors. A whole generation of students found this option attractive because it promised almost guaranteed employment in high-wage positions in fields like software engineering.
Then along came Artificial Intelligence and rendered human skills in areas like coding, the backbone of software development, obsolete. AI could do that work faster and more accurately. The preferred fields now seem to be Robotics and AI itself, but it’s easy to imagine that the AI dragon will be breathing its fire in pursuit of them next as it moves on to the mastery of ever more complex skills.
So, here’s the irony. Wouldn’t those myriad computer science majors have been better off majoring in some Humanities field where they could develop their thinking skills and nurture their creativity in ways that would make them adaptable to newly evolving fields? Instead they opted for a narrow band of skills that have little adaptability. Shouldn’t we be valuing capable writers and thinkers or people with a sweeping sense of historical and political trends at this moment when so much is in flux?
Now we come to the harder half. Anyone seeing the release of the Gaza hostages this week would have to be made of stone not to be moved. Whatever your view of the war, the reunions of loved ones after two years of hellish captivity brought a deep sense of relief and a small glimmer of hope that the war might soon be over.
But whatever warmth I was feeling was short lived. Israel’s conduct of the war and its ongoing oppression of the Palestinian population in the West Bank does not disappear with the hostage release. Let me try to enumerate what continues to trouble and anger me:
- A Muslim friend pointed out on Facebook how racist the western press has been in its coverage of the hostage release. The almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners who were freed received minimal coverage. Articles about heartwarming reunions in Khan Yunis or Ramallah were rare. As in all prisoner swaps, the number of Palestinians freed vastly outnumbered the Israelis, which is itself a racist statement of the relative value of the lives of the two groups.
- One of the most troubling things about the wholesale destruction of Gaza and the unimaginable loss of innocent lives is the general, though not universal, absence of empathy for the victims among too many Israelis and American Jews. I don’t see any evidence of change there with the conditions that contributed to the war still in place. What has been learned?
- Despite all “The war is over” hoopla from Trump, aimed primarily at the Nobel Peace Prize committee, the war is far from over. The last cease fire negotiation resulted in a similar multi-stage process, but Bibi never had any intention of moving beyond Stage 1 – the release of hostages – and we may be seeing the same scenario this time, and Hamas may be playing the same game. I keep picturing those desperate, yet ever hopeful Gazans trudging up the coastal highway heading to their now non-existent homes. If either or both parties decide that the cease fire terms have been violated, those innocents might once again be caught in the crossfire.
- I reluctantly admit that Trump deserves some credit for this week’s breakthroughs, but it still pains me to see the adulation he is reaping both here and in Israel. Should it matter that his own motivation is far from pure? As we can see from the gathering in Egypt following the hostage release, the exchanges there with the Egyptians and the Emiratis were less about peace than about transferring more cash into Trump pockets through hotel deals and other investment schemes of which we may never learn the details. It’s so sordid.
- And Bibi is still in power. It was heartening to hear the boos in Hostage Square when his name was invoked. Many Israelis hate him as much as I do, but the crowd’s antagonism was more about his efforts to derail earlier cease fire efforts which could have saved more of the hostages’ lives and suffering inflicted on the Palestinian people.
All of the above reflect the fact that Israel lost its moral compass during these past two years, while alienating most of its former supporters and, by its actions, has complicated and endangered the lives of Jews outside of Israel. As hard as I try, I don’t see the conditions in place for turning this tragic situation around. I would love to be proven wrong.
