The humanities are valuable for far more than their economic contribution, former Cornell provost, Arts and Sciences dean and professor Don Randel told a full house in Goldwin Smith Hall's Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium on March 31, Ithaca's first springlike day.

Randel, president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, returned to Cornell to give a lecture titled "What About the Humanities?"

A musicologist by training, he called for a moratorium on the phrase "the crisis in the humanities." "There are too many other real crises to go around," he said.

Instead, Randel said, we should think about the proper place of the humanities and the arts in the life of the university, which in turn strive to exemplify their place in society.

The desire to justify everything in instrumental (or financial) terms has come to higher education, he said. "Where budgets must be cut, the temptation is to value those activities that are thought to enhance revenue or at least minimize loss." He noted that students and parents also look for a degree that will lead to a job and long-term stability.

Citing Princeton professor Stanley Katz, Randel said, "The humanities community has not developed a plausible case for enhanced public support." Randel also quoted Columbia professor Andew Delbanco: "… if educators hope for a renewed public trust in the value of liberal as opposed to practical or vocational education, we have to come to terms with the utility question, one way or another."

Randel noted that the National Endowment for the Arts received additional money from federal stimulus funding, but the National Endowment for the Humanities did not. "This was, to be sure, another sign [of how the humanities are regarded] in the system, but we should not be distracted by the allocation of such pathetic sums."

The humanities must make a case for themselves in practical terms the public will understand, Randel said, noting that studies show that lively arts communities can be powerful economic engines and justify public investment, he said.

The case for the humanities is not made enough, Randel said, citing under- and unemployed humanities Ph.D.s. "Imagine establishing something of the quality of Cornell's Knight Writing Program in some fraction of the 4,000 or so institutions of higher education in the country. The economic impact would be every bit as powerful as creating the jobs that build highways and bridges, and the contribution to repairing the nation's crumbling intellectual infrastructure would be notable."

Another reason to invest in the humanities: Appreciation of foreign languages, history, religion and cultures would boost our global competitiveness, help us make allies to whom we can sell products and perhaps avoid wars, he added.

Randel went on to consider the divide, real and perceived, between scientists and humanists; competition for resources in university budgets; and how science can be and is sometimes used for evil.

Randel called for deeper collaboration between scientists and humanists, with less emphasis put on money. Rather than seeing education as a value proposition -- the financial return of a degree -- we should look at the values proposition of higher education and the humanities and the arts.

"The character of a society and of a university will ultimately reflect its values more than its wealth," Randal said. "Values will determine how wealth is created and the uses to which it is put. The questions that a society and a university must ask itself, therefore -- especially in times of strained resources -- is, what are our values? What do we, in fact, stand for?"

The answers, he suggested, can be found in the humanities.

The lecture was sponsored by the Society for the Humanities.