It’s no mistake that in authoritarian regimes, studies of the humanities are sharply curtailed or eliminated altogether while science and technology (so-called “practical” education) is increased or at least not reduced.

While the US does not quite yet meet the definition of an autocracy, it is subject to unrelenting and ever-increasing corporate control that is acting as a de facto autocracy. This not-quite-conspiracy of large corporations does not quite have the same imperatives as an authoritarian regime but exercises nearly the same control in reality.

As an aside, I think that’s one of the few original ideas I’ve ever had – that as corporate control has increased,  LGBT oppression has decreased as a direct result since corporations simply do not care about this for the most part one way or the other – and in fact, fully-integrated LGBT people make better consumers.

So that is all to say that it’s no real surprise that corporations and their rulers do not care much at all for the humanities – the study thereof is dangerous to them. It directly threatens their power base by showing alternatives both imagined and actual, and allows those who study in the field to think their way out of corporate bastilles.

As universities are captured by more and more administrators from the business world, this will only increase. Expect to see much more humanities departments annihilated in the next few decades; I would not be surprised if in 30 years only one in 20 American universities has any faculty in any humanities area at all.