President Holley defends liberal arts education
Mount Holyoke College President Danielle R. Holley defended the liberal arts in an interview with the Boston Globe Magazine, warning that a deep education deficit threatens civic empowerment and leaves people vulnerable to misinformation.
Boston Globe Magazine interviewed 10 college presidents in New England about the power and promise of liberal arts education and the peril higher education is facing. President Danielle R. Holley spoke about the current attacks on intellectualism and the rigors of interdisciplinary study.
“When we ask about liberal arts education, we’re asking, ‘What kind of society do we want?’ Do we want a society in which, generally, we are an educated and empowered populace?” she said. “The opposite of that is what we have now: a populace that is more compliant and more willing to [tolerate] lots of things that we would [have thought] in the past wouldn’t be possible. The idea that cable news would spend days arguing about whether chattel slavery was negative shows that we are in a deep education deficit in this country. And we don’t need less liberal arts education. We need more, and we need it to be stronger.”
Holley also discussed the impact of a liberal arts education on the world when students return to their communities.
“I deeply believe that when you get a liberal arts education, it also has to be an education where we, as the universities and colleges, help you … understand how that education isn’t just good for you, it’s good for your family, good for your communities, good for the world,” she said. “Because if not, then the question is, ‘Why do I invest in this?’”
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