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this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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Politics
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Although I generally agree with the premise of the article, I don't think the author does himself any favors when he points out many perfectly legitimate reasons that the cuts are happening (documented declining enrollment in humanities, a history of financial planning issues that affect all WVU budgets, humanities making up a minority of cuts, etc).
Are the humanities being cut due to political or ideological pressure? What is the actual evidence that the cuts are ideological in origin? After presenting lots of specifics around finances, the author is curiously nonspecific on that point.
Controversial opinion incoming: two things can be true at once: state legislatures are woefully underfunding public higher education and need to boost support, AND, in the meantime every state institution doesn’t need a full roster of humanities departments filled with tenure track faculty when enrollment is just not justifying the cost … and other departments with lots of undergraduate and graduate students to teach have to suffer to keep them afloat.
I mean, I'm not saying the author is wrong, but they don't even point to a hot mic confession or a conservative e-mail that says "we need to scale back humanities at public universities, because it's teaching our kids the wrong things".
The idea that Republicans are specifically targeting liberal arts academics sounds truthy, and on brand for them, certainly. But it would be nice to see more evidence than angry assertion.