COVID-19 and the Urgency of the Interdisciplines in the Corporate University

Abstract:As US universities and colleges increasingly identify with neoliberal discourses of students as human capital and higher education as a direct investment in earning potential, the liberal arts and humanistic fields of study are valued only for their capacity to train students in "multicultural communication." The minimization of their intellectual project marks these fields as susceptible to terminal budget cuts, a long-standing trend intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic. Some humanists have responded to this devaluation by defending the humanities as sites that produce knowledge for knowledge's sake. Such reflections defend the older venerable humanistic traditions often at the expense of newer and lesser humanities, namely, Black studies and feminist studies. In a recent Forbes article, the president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni argues that core language and humanities courses (e.g. writing, US history) should be protected, but "expensive fluff" courses should be eliminated as a cost-cutting measure. This "fluff" in fact represents the only significant epistemic challenge to the unreflective valuation of the Enlightenment project that birthed both scientific and humanistic traditions of study. This article analyzes recent COVID-related medical research to demonstrate how Black and feminist studies reject the assumptions of the Western canon in both humanities and STEM courses. Investing in these fields does not merely invest in students' communication skills, but in their ability to critically engage their home disciplines, fields of work, and political systems. Rather than defunding the interdisciplines, we urge institutions to model undergraduate studies more broadly in line with these fields.