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Humanities in Action

Perspectives. Resources. Involvement.

Humanities in Action is a project of the National Humanities Center

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  • Home
  • What Are the Humanities?
  • Get Involved
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Featured Issue

Public Square

Healing Rifts and Restoring Civility

Incivility and polarization, which have increasingly typified public discourse in the United States over the past couple of decades, have coalesced into a serious threat to democracy itself. Recent events, including an insurrectionist attack on Congress, demonstrate the very real dangers that rancor and disunity present. Learn More ›

By National Humanities Center
January 2021January 2021
The National Humanities Center is an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated exclusively to advanced study in all areas of the humanities. The Center supports excellence in humanities research and education at all levels and promotes broader public understanding and appreciation for the humanities through public engagement activities linked to its scholarly and educational programs.

Humanities Perspectives

Scholars providing context and humanistic insight on important topics.
  • Kyle Harper Ancient Rome Has an Urgent Warning for Us, Kyle Harper
  • Mark I. West The link between literature and empathetic presidents, Mark I. West
  • Judith Friedlander Why left and right both get the meaning of academic freedom wrong, Judith Friedlander
  • Isabel Wilkerson America’s Enduring Caste System, Isabel Wilkerson
  • Anupama Rao Revolution, Reconstruction, and Race in the US: The Complex History Behind BLM Protests, Anupama Rao
  • kihana miraya ross Call It What It Is: Anti-Blackness, kihana miraya ross
  • Robert D. Newman Rage and Beauty: Celebrating Complexity, Democracy, and the Humanities, Robert D. Newman (NHC President and Director)

Issues Archive

Scholarship and Academia

Addressing Structural Racism in the Academy

By its very nature, institutional racism is elusive, hiding in plain sight under the guise of accepted traditions and through modes of professional behavior that cast a blind eye on the experiences of people of color. It is incumbent on us, therefore, to pay careful attention to those whose experiences of the academy have been shaped by encounters with racial bias if we are to have any hope of correcting them. Learn More ›

By National Humanities Center
October 2020February 2021
Scholarship and Academia

Pursuing Justice and Preserving Open Debate

Recently, over 150 notable journalists, writers, and academics signed a letter in Harper’s Magazine expressing concern over increasing intolerance on campuses, in newsrooms, and throughout our society. Numerous responses to this letter have raised important questions about freedom of expression and its limits, including the very possibility of truly “open debate” in a society where historic inequities have long suppressed the voices of those on the margins. Learn More ›

By National Humanities Center
July 2020January 2021
Public Square

Calling on the Humanities in the Midst of a Pandemic

As the COVID-19 pandemic crisis has engulfed the planet, most public discourse in the United States has focused on epidemiological characteristics of the disease, the strain it has placed on global healthcare resources and supply chains, the economic devastation it has wrought, and the merits of government response. Often unnoticed in those conversations, however, are the ways that those discussions are steeped in humanistic as much as scientific terms. Learn More ›

By National Humanities Center
May 2020August 2020

Contact Us

National Humanities Center
7 T.W. Alexander Drive, P.O. Box 12256
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709
Phone: 919.549.0661 | Fax: 919.990.8535
Email: info@nationalhumanitiescenter.org

About the Project

National Humanities Center Humanities in Action is a project of the National Humanities Center, created to highlight important issues involving humanities research and teaching and offer humanities perspectives on important public topics.