TO THE EDITOR:
Mr. Parr of the Parr Center for Ethics was a guest speaker in my freshman seminar.
“Why would a successful businessman contribute a large sum of money to a center for ethics rather than to the business school?” we wondered.
His answer: a business world without ethics is bad for everyone. I expand this to say: a world without liberal arts is bad for everyone.
The moral of this story is that there are some studies that have value beyond their ability to create jobs.
There are some studies that have value for their ability to encourage thinking and learning, their ability to help people develop fully formed ideas of right and wrong, and, to speak McCrory’s pure economic language, their general contribution to the public good.
African-American studies and women’s studies are two such disciplines.
Let’s take a look at gender studies. Among many things, gender studies looks at the structures in society that perpetuate and allow interpersonal violence. Gender studies teaches what someone can do to change these structures.
So perhaps gender studies may not land one an engineering job.
