W. Robert Connor (Photo: Kent Mullikin)

hen we were kids, roughhousing on the playground, a favorite sport—or should I say “torture”—was for several of us to seize a victim and tug in one direction while another group tugged the other way. Many were the sore arms and ripped shirts when evening came and we dragged ourselves home.

In our society, the humanities get tugged, and sometimes bruised, in a similar way. On one side, there is the simple joy of discovering something hitherto unknown or only dimly understood about something or somebody in the remote past or in a culture very different from our own. On the other side, there is the need to help formulate responses to pressing problems in the world around us. One of our Fellows, the British historian Mark Mazower, speaking at the twentieth-anniversary celebration of the Center’s dedication, pointed out the discrepancy between what scholars know about complex problems around the world and the information on which policy makers often depend. “It seems to me more important than ever,” Mazower said, “for Americans and for American scholars to keep in mind the importance of understanding and explaining what is happening in the world outside.” His remarks were all the more trenchant because as we were discussing the intersections of the scholarly world with the world around us, NATO was beginning to bomb Serbia. Humanistic scholars can’t claim to have the solution to today’s problems, but some of us can help decision makers get the background and the context right.

Some people, I know, think the humanities should be all one thing or the other. Any humanities center that’s worth its salt ought to be tugged in both directions and find ways to make the tension productive and stimulating. This issue of Ideas points to some ways in which humanistic scholars are dealing with issues that reach beyond the academy. Good scholars don’t let their standards get swept aside in this effort, and they don’t dismiss their colleagues whose scholarship may have less obvious or less practical benefits. But in an institution dedicated to the invigoration of the humanities, it is important to have represented both the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and the effort to make some contribution to the world around us.

When, after all the tugging, my childhood friends and I returned from the playground, tired as we were, we had grown a bit, were a little stronger, a little more ready for the next struggle. That seems to work at the Humanities Center, too.

W. Robert Connor, Director

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