Letter to the editor: To defend humanities, call on scientists and engineers, too
I enjoyed reading Cynthia Haven's article (Feb. 11), in which humanists respond to Stanley Fish's critique of the humanities. However, it is unfortunate that only humanists were represented. The virtues of a restaurant should not be sung by its staff, but by its customers. I am an engineer, and I think the humanities are very important. An aphorism one hears in the halls of Stanford's west end says that "MIT produces better engineers than Stanford, but they often end up working for Stanford engineers." Like any aphorism, it is exaggerated but contains a germ of truth. It's known that Stanford's undergraduate admissions process favors well-rounded students over angular ones. This preference for breadth over depth is reinforced by the relatively late deadline at Stanford for declaring a major—the end of sophomore year. While some engineering faculty might prefer a different balance, the current one conveys real benefits. Relative to their peers in other engineering institutions, our undergraduates write well, which is important in any endeavor; they are broadly informed and culturally aware; they take pleasure in exercising creativity; and they recognize engineering as a force for social change. I ascribe these things partly to their grounding in the humanities. (These same points were made by the humanists surveyed by Haven.) This doesn't mean that humanities should be preserved at Stanford simply to file the rough edges off our engineers. Every citizen of the world should have these characteristics; that is what makes us humane, not merely human.
Marc Levoy
Professor of Computer Science and of Electrical Engineering