The deaths, in the same week last month, of the great scholar of the Middle East Bernard Lewis and the great scholar of Russia Richard Pipes are a warning to American conservatives: don't give up on the universities.
Lewis and Pipes are being rightfully remembered for their influence as advisers to presidents and senators, and as public intellectuals who wrote for newspaper op-ed pages and political magazines.
When I graduated with my bachelor's degree in English at the end of the 2011 academic year, I panicked. If you've seen John Mullaney's new Netflix special Kid Gorgeous, you'll know why it wasn't just the springtime sun on my black robe that was making me sweat that afternoon. About twenty minutes into his routine, Mullaney admonishes his audience after they applaud how he spent $120,000 on an English degree, calling it "the worst financial decision" he ever made. What's worse is that, at the end of it all, he walked across the graduation stage "hung over, in a gown, to accept a certificate for reading books I didn't read."
Now, without getting into too much detail, I'll simply say that I can, at least in part, relate to Mullaney's experience. You certainly don't have to read every book you're assigned to pass your classes. In actuality, the successful English major (and any other student in the humanities) needs three things to graduate: marginally competent writing skills, an ability to skim canonical works, and a willingness to speak during group discussions. That's it. And there are some who probably get by with less.
