The Historian and the Murderer

A Croatian Historian's Death Ultimately Put Our Profession on Trial

On May 14, 2018, I was led into a nondescript courtroom in Kew Gardens, Queens to testify at a murder trial. I am a historian who loves details, and the resources involved in getting me into that humdrum room to be questioned with a jury to my left, a judge to my right, and a murderer sitting in front of me astounded. An entire system of asking, telling, tracking, and filing for the grand finale of live community listening and judging: no wonder so many historians love to study court …

by Dominique K. Reill | June 10, 2021

“Frivolous” Humanities Helped Prisoners Survive in Communist Romania

Covertly Studying Language and Literature Connected Captives and Freed Their Minds

By Irina Dumitrescu | May 25, 2016

In a recent New York Times article on the movement to promote university majors promising higher employment and income, Anthony Carnevale, a professor at Georgetown University, sums up the utilitarian …

The Humanities Aren’t As Dead As You Think

But They Need to Integrate With Other Disciplines to Prosper in an Era of More Students and More Majors

by Jennifer Summit | August 19, 2013

What’s happened to the humanities—once the center, and now the wallflower, of American higher education? The subject of their decline and fall has become a familiar lament. As New York …

Teach Art. It’s the Law.

I Used to Try To Persuade Communities That Arts Education Was Valuable. Then I Realized I Needed to Be More Direct.

by Carl Schafer | July 24, 2013

I started my career as an instrumental music teacher in 1957. This was in the Ontario-Montclair School District. Since then, I’ve been a music consultant, teacher, supervisor of a visual …

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