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@UVMHumanities I've been thinking about prison. Two years ago I taught mythology through the Liberal Arts in Prison Program at UVM at a women's prison. The course provided a space for women to ask questions, engage in dialogue, and challenge one another intellectually. 1/9
The course was hard, the women worked hard. The women didn't even know that such courses could be taken, such material learned. They didn't know what there was to be known. The class provided a space where they discovered their shared humanity and created a community. 2/9
Students don't come to college planning to major in Greek or religion. They gain exposure to these disciplines through distribution requirements. If we lose these courses, students will suffer an immeasurable loss. 3/9
The real threat posed by these cuts is prison of the mind. And without these course we won't even be able to recognize this prison for what it is. 4/9
We need STEM. We need humanities, social sciences. We should not be forced to compete for resources. We need to work together. 5/9
We need the humanists and the social scientists doing the hard labor of critiquing the questions asked by science, how those questions are informed by racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia. 6/9
We need Classics because Classics offers an entry to these hard conversations about the ways that identity shapes the knowledge that is produced and preserved. 7/9
We need Classics because without it we run the risk of ceding this territory to white supremacists. 8/9
These proposed cuts to the humanities reflect our values, and the communities we have the potential to create. 9/9