Conservatives killed the liberal arts

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 23:08:00 +0000

This week in The Weekly Standard the essayist Joseph Epstein asks what has become a sadly common question: “Who killed the liberal arts?” As a perennially overeager student, I can’t help but be delighted when I know the answer to a question, even if it is posed rhetorically. From my days as my high school's valedictorian through the completion of a Ph.D. thesis on contemporary productions of Greek tragedy in Latin America, I’ve always gotten a thrill from knowing the right answer. So here it is: The conservative movement killed the liberal arts -- Ronald Reagan, Rupert Murdoch, William F. Buckley and their latter-day heirs.

They have done so through a combination of decreasing access to education and demonizing academic culture and academics. Make no mistake about it: The death of the humanities is an ideologically motivated murder, more like a massacre. The decline of student enrollment in university and college liberal arts programs is a well-documented phenomenon. These declining student numbers, along with the receding place of the humanities in the general secondary and post-secondary curriculum, does seem to spell doom for the liberal arts.

Salon.com > Katie Billotte

Conservatives killed the liberal arts