How can higher education today create a community of critical thinkers and searchers for truth that transcends the boundaries of class, gender, and nation? Martha C. Nussbaum, philosopher and classicist, argues that contemporary curricular reform is already producing such “citizens of the world” in its advocacy of diverse forms of cross-cultural studies. Her vigorous defense of “the new education” is rooted in Seneca’s ideal of the citizen who scrutinizes tradition critically and who respects the ability to reason wherever it is found—in rich or poor, native or foreigner, female or male. Drawing on Socrates and the Stoics, Nussbaum establishes three core values of liberal education: critical self-examination, the ideal of the world citizen, and the development of the narrative imagination. Then, taking us into classrooms and campuses across the nation, including prominent research universities, small independent colleges, and religious institutions, she shows how these values are (and in some instances are not) being embodied in particular courses. She defends such burgeoning subject areas as gender, minority, and gay studies against charges of moral relativism and low standards, and underscores their dynamic and fundamental contribution to critical reasoning and world citizenship. For Nussbaum, liberal education is alive and well on American campuses in the late twentieth century. It is not only viable, promising, and constructive, but it is essential to a democratic society. Taking up the challenge of conservative critics of academe, she argues persuasively that sustained reform in the aim and content of liberal education is the most vital and invigorating force in higher education today.

A life of liberty and responsibility does not just happen, but requires a particular kind of education, one that aims at both a growth of the human soul and an enrichment of political society in justice and the common good. This we call a liberal education. Forgetfulness of liberty is also a forgetfulness of the multi-dimensional nature of the human person, and a diminution of political life. Keeping in mind what can be lost when liberal education is lost, this volume makes the case for recovering what is perennially noble and good in the liberal arts, and why the liberal arts always have a role to play in human flourishing. Each of the authors herein focuses on the connection of three primary themes: human dignity, liberal education, and political society. Intentionally rooted in the hub that joins the three themes, each author seeks to unfold the contemporary significance of that hub. As a whole, the volume explores how the three themes are crucial to each other: how they illuminate each other, how they need each other, and how the loss of one jeopardizes the wellbeing of the others. In individual chapters, the authors engage various relevant aspects of liberal education. As a result, the volume is organized into three parts: Liberal Education and a Life Well Lived; Thinkers on Dignity and Education in History; Contemporary Topics in Dignity and Education. As education is increasingly channeled into an ever more narrow focus on technical specialization, and measured against professional success, students themselves face a maelstrom of campus politics and competing political orthodoxies. These are among the issues that tend to militate against the operative liberty of the student to think and to speak as a person. This edited collection is offered as an invitation to think again about the liberal arts in order to recover the meaning of education as the authentic pursuit of the good life or eudemonia.

Many in higher education fear that the humanities are facing a crisis. But even if the rhetoric about “crisis” is overblown, humanities departments do face increasing pressure from administrators, politicians, parents, and students. In A New Deal for the Humanities, Gordon Hutner and Feisal G. Mohamed bring together twelve prominent scholars who address the history, the present state, and the future direction of the humanities. These scholars keep the focus on public higher education, for it is in our state schools that the liberal arts are taught to the greatest numbers and where their neglect would be most damaging for the nation. The contributors offer spirited and thought-provoking debates on a diverse range of topics. For instance, they deplore the push by administrations to narrow learning into quantifiable outcomes as well as the demands of state governments for more practical, usable training. Indeed, for those who suggest that a college education should be “practical”—that it should lean toward the sciences and engineering, where the high-paying jobs are—this book points out that while a few nations produce as many technicians as the United States does, America is still renowned worldwide for its innovation and creativity, skills taught most effectively in the humanities. Most importantly, the essays in this collection examine ways to make the humanities even more effective, such as offering a broader array of options than the traditional major/minor scheme, options that combine a student’s professional and intellectual interests, like the new medical humanities programs. A democracy can only be as energetic as the minds of its citizens, and the questions fundamental to the humanities are also fundamental to a thoughtful life. A New Deal for the Humanities takes an intrepid step in making the humanities—and our citizens—even stronger in the future.

As neoliberalism has expanded from corporations to higher education, the notion of “diversity” is increasingly seen as the contribution of individuals to an organization. By focusing on one liberal arts college, author Bonnie Urciuoli shows how schools market themselves as “diverse” communities to which all members contribute. She explores how students of color are recruited, how their lives are institutionally organized, and how they provide the faces, numbers, and stories that represent schools as diverse. In doing so, she finds that unlike students’ routine experiences of racism or other social differences, neoliberal diversity is mainly about improving schools’ images.

This open access book offers pioneering insights and practical methods for promoting diversity and inclusion in higher education classrooms and curricula. It highlights the growing importance of international education programs in Asia and the value of understanding student diversity in a changing, evermore interconnected world. The book explores diversity across physical, psychological and cogitative traits, socio-economic backgrounds, value systems, traditions and emerging identities, as well as diverse expectations around teaching, grading, and assessment. Chapters detail significant trends in active learning pedagogy, writing programs, language acquisition, and implications for teaching in the liberal arts, adult learners, girls and women, and Confucian heritage communities. A quality, relevant, 21st Century education should address multifaceted and intersecting forms of diversity to equip students for deep life-long learning inside and outside the classroom. This timely volume provides a unique toolkit for educators, policy-makers, and professional development experts.

The issues Reichman considers—which are the subjects of daily conversation on college and university campuses nationwide as well as in the media—will fascinate general readers, students, and scholars alike.