W hen he added his voice to the ranks of those who have offered a defense of the humanities, President Meric Gertler of the University of Toronto struck a tenuous balance that has now become familiar. In a 2015 essay entitled “The Enduring Relevance of the Humanities,” Gertler spoke in lofty terms of how the humanities offer their own “intrinsic rewards,” such as “a conversation about what it means to be human” and “a critical rethinking of individual happiness and cultural vitality.”
But even if a student is not particularly moved by the opportunity to reflect on what it means to be human, Gertler continued, he or she can rest assured that “a humanities degree also helps prepare graduates for a wide range of careers.” Fear not, parents; Gertler insists, “Many employers see great value in the competencies shown by employees with a humanities background.”
As any good political consultant can tell you, if you find yourself debating an issue on terms established by the other side, you’re at a disadvantage before the conversation even begins. That is what’s happening here. Gertler, defender of the humanities, does so in part by making a case for their relevance in the marketplace.
But Gertler is hardly alone, of course. Many others have taken up the humanities’ cause on similar terms. And he’s entitled to a modicum of sympathy from critics: As a college president, he is obligated to respond to the anxieties of a vast and diverse audience, many members of which have concerns about their (or their children’s) future in the job market. If a first-generation student borrowing money to attend college has questions about what a humanities degree will do for her career prospects, we should have a serious and candid discussion about what that degree has to offer.
A culture in which relevance drives the agenda operates for the continued benefit of those who are already successful.
To truly do right by students, however, professors must also commit to a thoroughgoing critique of the economic and cultural landscape that gives instrumentalist concerns such urgency. This brings us back to the title of Gertler’s essay, and specifically that dreaded word: “relevance.”
Talk of relevance is pervasive. In a literal sense, to know that something is “relevant” hints at a degree of importance or dynamism but reveals very little else.
And yet relevance is everywhere. It isn’t just the humanities — the pursuit of relevance also preoccupies authors of children’s books, sports coaches, the Peace Corps, political scientists, and even an entire generation (hello, boomers).
With all of this anxiety afoot, it is no surprise that Merchants of Relevance have stepped forward to keep customers from falling behind. Authors turn out books promising to help accountants, marketers, and pastors remain relevant. For-profit colleges lure students with promises that they will learn relevant job skills. We live in a “relevance culture.” But what exactly is it that we are lionizing and desperately pursuing?
A mong those who have tried to assign a definition to relevance is the motivational speaker Ross Shafer. According to Shafer, “Relevance is taking action to make sure you matter to your customers, your clients, your members, and your teams. If you don’t matter to your constituents, they can go away and not care if you exist.” In other words, for Shafer, and for many others, “relevance” refers to a state of being needed, of being in demand, of being judged by external authorities and tastemakers to be hip and felicitous. To be relevant is to stay abreast of the latest trends in order to assure continued success, popularity, and profit.
We live in a time of profound uncertainty and instability. Gone is the era of the stable, well-paying job and generous state funding of higher education; in its place is the age of the gig economy and the corporatized university. Few of us enjoy the comfort of a clearly delineated path toward security and accomplishment. We cannot be certain that the skills and insights people find valuable today will still be in demand 10 or 20 years from now. Consequently, flexibility and adaptability are counted among the highest of virtues. If we can’t be sure what the future will require of us, all that we can do is hope to somehow be relevant to whatever is happening.
Discomfort with careerist defenses of the humanities is nothing new. To move beyond the familiar hand-wringing, we must recognize the broader social affliction that relevance culture has become.
In focusing our energies on responding to the vicissitudes of the marketplace lest we lose our relevance, we curtail our perspectives in three important ways. First, we put temporal blinders on our own vision, making it all too easy to lose sight of the full scope of history and the time beyond the immediate future. At the conclusion of the Cold War, for instance, the analysis of Russia lost some of its appeal for scholars and policy makers. Russia’s fitful efforts to establish a market economy and a democracy in the 1990s were not viewed as relevant to the United States, at least compared to the threat posed by the old Soviet Union. As a result, when developments such as the 2014 annexation of Crimea forced the rest of the world to grapple with the regime of Vladimir Putin, Americans were left scrambling to catch up. By the time the discussion of Russia had been reinvigorated, complete with headlines announcing that “first-rate Kremlinologists” were “needed urgently,” Putin’s regime was powerful enough to influence an American election.
Second, along with temporal blinders, relevance has us putting on philosophical blinders as well. The totalizing imperatives of relevance culture can limit the conversation devoted to worthy and valuable concerns that the Merchants of Relevance might dismiss as esoteric and unproductive. We hear this attitude frequently in our politics. During a 2013 interview with the conservative radio host (and former secretary of education) Bill Bennett, then-North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory mused, “If you want to take gender studies, that’s fine. Go to a private school and take it. But I don’t want to subsidize that if that’s not going to get someone a job.” These jabs aren’t the exclusive province of Republicans; even President Obama has indulged in this line of rhetoric, taking a jab at the earning potential of an art-history degree (though he later expressed regret for having done so).
In The Chronicle Review last year, Jeremy Adelman offered a critique of the form of “applied history” that Graham Allison and Niall Ferguson called for in The Atlantic when they advocated the formation of a “White House Council of Historical Advisers.” Such a body may well help presidents make more informed decisions, but Adelman asks, “What happens to pasts that are not so readily repurposed for the future as decided by today? Whose past gets summoned? And who is the past to serve if relevance drives the agenda, shakes up status differences, and allocates resources?”
All of those questions are apt, but the last one in particular speaks to the final and most profound failing of relevance culture. A culture in which relevance drives the agenda operates for the continued benefit of those who are already successful, and who hold the power to promote the dominant understanding of what is relevant at any particular moment. It obligates those who are not advantaged to compete on terms set by the powerful.
A focus on relevance works in the service of what Herbert Marcuse would call the one-dimensional society, which is “capable of containing social change — qualitative change which would establish essentially different institutions, a new direction of the productive process, new modes of human existence.” In holding us hostage to the immediate, relevance culture constrains the space necessary for the sort of broad-ranging discussions and reflections that can help us to distinguish promising programs of social change from those that would only make matters worse. This point is important. As the Trump Era dawns, it is essential to emphasize that a critique of relevance should not be confused with an endorsement of inattention to the world around us. In fact, it can equip us to engage with pressing political and social questions in a more thoughtful way. The transcendence of relevance allows for individuals to embrace their personal passions, but it also subjects those passions to the rigorous assessments of history and logic instead of allowing mere popularity to carry the day. With an appreciation of history and a willingness to look beyond the ideological status quo, we will be in a better position to assess the merits and validity of the sensations of the moment, and to articulate alternatives.
It’s telling that when former Governor McCrory searched for an example of an academic discipline he wasn’t interested in providing with state funding, he chose gender studies. Disciplines like gender studies are not the only fields with the potential to cultivate thought that leads to social change, but they are among those whose transformative potential is most overt. (Is it any wonder that one of McCrory’s signature accomplishments as governor was an anti-LGBTQ “bathroom bill”?)
Ideas that challenge tradition and those in power will have a more difficult time being cultivated, aired, and debated in a society occupied with the pursuit of relevance. To the extent that none of us is entirely satisfied with the society in which we live, that gives us all reason to pull relevance off of its pedestal.