Hacker News Reader

Strikes me as victim blaming and misses the point.

Humanities are critical to society and have been for many thousands of years.

Getting rid of the department because of "glum" people, is downright silly.

I think you are confounding "The Humanities" and the humanities practiced by contemporary faculty.

As the above comment indicates, I guess I may be arguing with ChatGPT, but if it's broke, fix it, don't get rid of it.

You aren't talking to ChatGPT. I agree with you that the humanities would be "fixed" ideally. I don't know how you do that, though. I never said you should get rid of them. Just that I can't really blame UChicago et al. for not supporting what's going on. There are so many other issues with contemporary humanities departments I am not even touching on. Also, no one is "getting rid of the humanities" writ large -- in this case, we're talking about a particular program at a particular institution. Seen another way, retracting support from a broken branch is a good way to redirect resources to better-functioning departments at UChicago and elsewhere.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com