Those who matter most to the humanities fall, I think, into two classes. The most important is that relatively small group of 18-year-olds (disproportionately few from poorer families) who are inclined to study the humanities. Our immediate future rests primarily with them. And in regard to them, surely, we support the humanities best by teaching well whatever it is that we teach, and then by inviting them further into our world by presenting ourselves as its fit and welcoming members (not exemplars).
The second group who matter are the policymakers and politicians who control public research and education funding, and those who may influence them. This is tricky terrain. But one caution seems apposite. It is true that the humanities are socially instrumental in various and not unimportant ways, but pointing that out is, in the end, a vulnerable policy argument since the social uses the humanities do have could probably be achieved more cheaply by means that don’t require the humanities as a whole. After all, most of what the humanities do has internal, not external, use value, where it has use value at all.
via Public Books — Stop Defending the Humanities.