A national report co-authored by a University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa sociologist found that while the humanities and social sciences continue to produce rigorous and valuable scholarship, some disciplines are experiencing instances where scholarly standards have been compromised as political considerations shape research and academic evaluation.
The report, published June 5 on the Vanderbilt-WashingtonU website , was written by a committee of scholars from universities across the country, including Associate Professor Ashley Rubin in the UH Mānoa Department of Sociology in the College of Social Sciences . The group examined concerns about declining public confidence in the humanities and allegations that ideological commitments have influenced scholarship in some academic fields.
"This report is a major milestone because, beyond our findings, it represents an interdisciplinary group of scholars standing up for scholarly rigor and not letting political goals corrupt the research enterprise or the standards by which research is evaluated," Rubin said.
The committee reviewed research and academic practices across philosophy, anthropology, sociology, history, literary studies and music studies. It concluded that the most serious concerns arise when political goals are allowed to override traditional scholarly standards centered on evidence, objectivity and open inquiry.
According to the report, these concerns generally fall into three categories:
- Treating contested issues as settled science in ways that discourage debate
- Prioritizing narratives that advance social or political goals over the pursuit of understanding
- Rejecting the idea that objective facts and evidence can be separated from political values
The authors identified examples and patterns they point to as consistent with these trends to varying degrees across the disciplines they studied. However, they rejected claims that the humanities and social sciences are broadly failing as academic fields, emphasizing that scholars in these fields are still producing serious and impactful scholarship.
The report recommends that universities should promote intellectual openness, rigorous standards and the free exchange of ideas while resisting efforts to judge scholarship based on ideological conformity. It also cautions against political pressures from outside academia, including attempts by governments or advocacy groups to influence research and teaching.
The authors conclude that the humanities and humanistic social sciences remain essential to higher education because they help people better understand culture, history, society and human experience. Maintaining scholarly rigor, they contend, is critical to preserving public trust in those disciplines and in universities more broadly.
The report was commissioned by the chancellors of Vanderbilt University and Washington University in St. Louis.
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