If the humanities are fading so fast, why did a humanities professor at one of the best colleges in the United States get a $1.5 million grant? An article called Brooks to Study Law, Humanities with Grant in the Yale Daily News, which can be found at http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/23003, lets us know just what Peter Brooks plans on doing with that grant. Peter Brooks is a professor of Comparative Literature at Yale (www.yale.edu) and every year for the past three years a grant is given to someone in the humanities department there. Why is Yale, one of the best schools in the country so focused on improving the humanities, especially after the constant criticism that the humanities has received? It is simple, Peter Brooks is also a professor at that Yale Law School and said “he was drawn to the idea of applying humanities methods of reading and interpretation to professional scholarship after the 2004 release of Justice Department memorandums approving the use of torture.” I believe that we need more people like Peter Brooks teaching us. He is not saying that the humanities are what will turn our world around, nor is he saying that it is pointless. I believe that he has every intention of combining humanities with law and science in order to make the world a better place.
To me, this is a very interesting idea. Applying humanities to law and science doesn’t seem like it could work. However, Peter Brooks is determined to make it work and in all reality, I believe that maybe it could. If we look at what the humanities have to offer and what other areas of study lack, maybe there will be some connection between the two and Peter Brooks will be able to use his grant money to start combining them (To learn more about Peter Brooks, Click here: http://www.yale.edu/opa/yb&c/story3.html) . He isn’t claiming that the humanities are more ethical that law and science, but what I believe is that the humanities offer something that the other two cannot and vice versa. So, can Peter Brooks do the research in order to prove that the humanities have something to offer? Hopefully. What do you think? Do you think it is possible for the humanities to go hand in hand with law and science?
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4 comments:
I believe that Peter Brooks is very brave for bringing up how humanities is just as important as the sciences and law. He is giving the humanities a "voice." I believe that you really can't have one without the other. Humanities and the sciences together can work together to find something great about life or about almost anything. Peter Brooks is very courageous for standing up for the humanities.
I agree that Brooks is doing something great by trying to combine humanities with science. They both have interesting things to offer. Maybe if methods from both subject areas are applied together, they can bring something extraordinary to the table. It's like in the children's television show, Power Rangers. Each individual robotic "zord" has a power that is uniquely powerful, but when the zords come together to form the Megazord they have a power so strong that they can take on the greatest challenges.
I think it is very interesting that Brooks is going to explore the roles of the humanities in law and medicine. I never would have thought to combine the humanities with law and medicine, but it seems like something worth giving a try. I do not think that Brooks would have been given a $1.5 million grant from the foundation if they thought he was not going to be able to accomplish anything. They gave the money to a person they thought could make a difference. I do think that it is possible for the humanities to offer something to law and medicine. I am not sure exactly how, but I’ll leave that to the person with the $1.5 million to figure out.
If the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is willing to grant Peter Brooks $1.5 million and back them up with their name, he had better come up with something to law and science students through a pair of humanitarian eyes! Law is very closely related to the humanities as it was born out of philosophy, right? Due to this, I’m surprised that people taking law classes are not well versed in humanities analysis of text! What did they do for their undergrad? It would be more understandable if science was having trouble discerning whether it was just to torture humans, since the job of science is not to discern what is just but to explain how things are. With Yale helping lead the way to help combine the disciplines, hopefully other institutions will follow.
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