At 95, Betty Reid Soskin is the oldest active U.S. Park Ranger. Having lived through wars, racial segregation, and other turbulent times in our history, she says empathy and world peace are possible through the humanities. To celebrate its 40th year anniversary of grant making, programming, and partnerships that connect Californians to each other, California … Continued
Larry Kramer, president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, went to college expecting to become a doctor, but taking a course on religious ethics and moral issues shifted his direction. To him, the humanities allow us to be introspective and to understand our lives from a larger point of view, which leads to a … Continued
Averill Corkin describes the moment she decided to major in the humanities after seeing a video performance of the song “Du måste finnas” (“You Have to Be There”), in which a female refugee, overcome with loss and fear, questions the existence of God. She notes, despite the language difference, she understood the woman’s experience through … Continued
Community college teacher Julie Mullis describes how a classroom experience with students from diverse backgrounds and perspectives created a memorable and “multi-colored” sense of place and belonging. The conversations and debates that took place in a Humanities 122 class illuminated a profound truth for Mullis and her students: “we all had this common strand of … Continued
Bernier shares how her lifelong interest in the history of slavery was sparked by curiosity about the stories that seemed to be missing in the account of the British Empire she was taught in school.
Over the years I have been blessed by many humanities moments, but there is one that I especially cherish. Some fifteen years ago, I happened upon an article in The American Scholar written by a professor from the University of Wisconsin-Madison who put forth the ten qualities he believed a person would acquire from having … Continued
National Endowment for the Humanities Chairman William “Bro” Adams shares how philosophy professor and World War II veteran Glenn Gray and his book The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle helped him come to terms with his own experiences in Vietnam. For centuries philosophers like Gray have sought ways to make sense of the world … Continued
In this video recollection, author and conservation activist Terry Tempest Williams describes her first encounter with Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and the ethical questions shared by her grandmother about taking personal responsibility for the natural world. As she says of this moment, “On that day, I became an environmentalist.” In discussing Carson’s influence as a … Continued
Carol Quillen describes how, growing up, her initial insights and perceptions came from what she calls promiscuous reading — reading anything and everything and then finding connections among these very different texts. She consumed Augustine’s Confessions, in the original Latin, which captures and conveys meaning differently than English and enabled her both to grasp and … Continued
In this video submission, Ken Burns recounts how formative experiences, both deeply personal and as a young person growing up in the midst of the Civil Rights era, have shaped his perspective on American history and have informed nearly all his documentary projects. Trying to make sense of his own individual story within the nation’s … Continued