If there’s one thing public intellectuals can agree on, it’s the necessity of disagreement. But thoughtful debate in a public forum is becoming increasingly rare, threatening the the future of intellectual life in America, according to George Scialabba ’69, Professor Jesse McCarthy, and Anastasia Berg ’09.

The three spoke about the evolving role of the public intellectual at an event hosted by the Public Culture Project, an initiative of the Division of Arts & Humanities, on Feb. 25.

“Partly, public intellectuals exist to give voice and articulation to as-yet unformed ideas in public, the populace. And hopefully to compare and contrast,” said Scialabba, an essayist and literary critic. “It never works ideally. Usually public intellectuals, like everyone else, are partisan — sometimes rancidly partisan. But in democratic cultures they do help people understand their encoded impulses and desires and see them or hear them represented in public life.”

Find the full article on by Eileen O'Grady on The Harvard Gazette website. Photo by Mira Kaplan.

"It might be natural, at a moment like this, to focus just on the challenges, but positive things have been happening on campus. What’s been most exciting to you and the Corporation?

As I mentioned earlier, there are so many great things happening at Harvard. Our researchers making groundbreaking progress in diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s, and other diseases are an inspiration, especially at a moment when scientific research is under duress.Across the University there is exciting, innovative work underway. The new Public Culture Project at the FAS will bring the critical thinking of the humanities to some of the biggest questions of our time, such as the evolution of AI and the moral principles underpinning economic life."

Find the full article on The Harvard Gazette website. Photo by Stephanie Mitchell via The Harvard Gazette.

"But there are promising signs. A pilot program at Utah State University places questions of meaning, purpose and civic responsibility at the heart of general education. All enrolled students will engage with the works of Plato, John Stuart Mill, Lao Tzu and Alexis de Tocqueville, fostering civil discourse and critical thinking. A new initiative called the Catherine Project has led thousands of people through readings of great books, online, for free. At Harvard, the Public Culture Project serves the public interest by hosting conversations with leaders from across society on matters of moral and spiritual import.

The nation will need more ideas than the ones above. Our democracy will not last another 250 years if it is populated by communities lacking direction and animated by addiction. As Coolidge proclaimed, we cannot rely on material prosperity alone. We must recover the “things of the spirit” — meaning, purpose and reverence for the good — if America is to endure."

Find the full article by Program Director Ian Marcus Corbin and Advisory Board member Spencer J. Cox on the Washington Post website. Photo from iStock via Washington Post.

"What does the rise of artificial intelligence mean for humanity? That was the question at the core of “How is digital technology shaping the human soul?,” a panel discussion that drew experts from computer science to comparative literature last week.

The Oct. 1 event was the first from the Public Culture Project, a new initiative based in the office of the dean of arts and humanities. Program Director Ian Marcus Corbin, a philosopher on the neurology faculty of Harvard Medical School, said the project’s goal was putting “humanist and humanist thinking at the center of the big conversations of our age.”

“Are we becoming tech people?” Corbin asked. The answers were varied."

Find the full article by Clea Simon on the Harvard Gazette website. Photo by Veasey Conway via Harvard Gazette.

"I think I can speak for Sean and myself in saying that we both feel like there is too little of that sort of questioning going on both in academia and outside. I mean, one way you see it in academia, to take Harvard as an example, is last I heard, all of the Arts and Humanities put together have a total of 7% of Harvard undergrads concentrating in them. There are more people concentrating in Economics than there are in all the Arts and Humanities combined.

And at the same time, I would argue that our public life, our lives at work, our lives in politics, have been drained of a lot of that kind of deep, kind of moral, spiritual sap. And in various ways, we’ve been told and we believed that these sorts of things are sort of private matters. They need to be left at home. They need to be kept in the closet. I think that tends to lead to a kind of desiccated public sphere that can be really alienating for people, right?"

Find the full conversation here. 

"Harvard’s Division of Arts and Humanities launched its inaugural Public Culture Project to encourage philosophical inquiry at Harvard, with the aim of addressing increasing polarization in the U.S. and reinvigorating public life.

The Project will involve a series of public conversations between speakers from fields such as government, business, and technology to engage in questions about education and work, the role of artificial intelligence in human lives, and the role of God in the U.S., among others."

Find the full article by Ellen P. Cassidy and Catherine Jeon on the Harvard Crimson website. Photo by Megan M. Ross.