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Episode 141 [PATREON EXCLUSIVE] -- The (deep breath) "Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences" (Patreon)

Published:
2026-06-29 05:10:40
Edited:
2026-06-29 05:22:49
Imported:
2026-09

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Content

Earlier this month, Moira ruined Adrian's vacation by alerting him to the "Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences", which was presented as a broad and searing indictment of "pathologies" in humanities scholarship, but which turned out upon closer inspection something a lot narrower -- a familiar, if fascinating, assemblage of anti-theory cavils from the 90s and anti-wokeness anecdotes. Here's their conversation about the Report and why this tempest in the academic teapot is worth paying attention to in our current political moment.

Comments

In Bed With the Right

We had some issues with our microphones and audio backups on this one -- please excuse the abrupt ending, I (Adrian) couldn't figure out how to salvage that. What we did say in the full file was that we love you guys and thank you for bearing with us through our travels and then this 70 minute rabbit hole!

Miriam G

Hello, for me the episodes always cut off somewhere on the credits (only on Patreon; mid-sentence), so I'll feel right at home 😃 (just in case it's a general experience, though I more expect it to be in my settings)

In Bed With the Right

Oh that's weird! I think this is something we can investigate (there's a patron view or something like that we can use to check what things appear as on your end)! Will figure this out tomorrow!

Libby

Going to listen to the episode and finish reading the document in the morning but as a politics PhD I’m kind of bemusedly shocked my discipline doesn’t seem to have made the list 😂

Tobias Heal

I've experienced this too! Given that it's in the credits it's not the end of the world but I figured I'd add another data point

Tobias Heal

Regardless of any issues that the original paper may or may not have had, the mindset of "women were all gatherers, men were all hunters" is such a bugbear of mine. People go on and on about how "archaeology proves this" or "historically people did that". Yeah, well, a big part of my PhD has been going through site reports of early medieval cemeteries and the number of times I've seen reports comment in surprise or confusion when a "male" skeleton (no anatomical study, just looked at the objects they were buried with) contains glass beads because "glass beads are for women". In the same way, if any "female" burial contains a large knife or short sword "it's for weaving, because it can't be a weapon if it's buried with a woman". If you're looking for systematic bias in archaeology, it's not hard to spot: it's misogyny.

Tobias Heal

Incidentally Adrian, I've always heard the journal pronounced like "plus one" rather than spelling out the letters, but that may just be in French

Maud McInerney

« Research using modern artificial intelligence technology »! I shrieked at that. Loved this episode, but of course I am your target audience for it: I teach English and Comparative Literature at a small liberal arts college (and am sad that Adrian never took the Swat bus up to Haverford to take a class with me). I teach courses about queerness in the Middle Ages and woke nonsense like that. Before you ask… never taught TAH, and in fact have no memory of him at all.

Tobias Heal

Yeah, that's a classic example, but it's still extremely common to see that sort of thing, though for some periods more than others

SnowPenguin

Thanks for this great episode. Vivek Venkataraman who criticised the Anderson paper, also seems to have a science background — his PhD is in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, with an undergraduate degree in Physics. His research is in biological anthropology. I think this supports what you say, as both the original paper and its criticism are from science.

Rithya Kunnawalkam Elayavalli

Oh my God! I've been waiting for this!! Vanderbilt professor here who's been fuming about this for a while since it came out! It's beyond insane what our chancellor is pushing

Rithya Kunnawalkam Elayavalli

Given our relatively new chancellor's policy of 'principled institutional neutrality' having more holes in it than a tea strainer, a lot of us here have been dealing with the abject breakdown of everything queer related, the refusal to condemn the compact from the trump admin and so many other daily erosion of systems

Honey Flood

This is helping me wake up this morning by boiling my blood

Kelsey

Thank you, Adrian, for the replication crisis quip! The idea that there is a unique crisis in the humanities when there are so many cases of outright fraud in psychology and economics is infuriating. Also, folks should do a web search for “Frontiers in Cell Development and Biology AI rat image” if they want some nice anecdotal evidence that all is not well in STEM scholarship. One thing I’ve kept wondering while reading from this report is, when exactly were the halcyon years of politically neutral high quality scholarship that we need to return to? Because as a historian of the Middle East, I think it’s a good thing that these days we don’t write about “oriental despots” and “Mohammedanism.” Also pretty cool that we can be professionally rewarded for studying the history of such nobodies as women and ethnic and religious minorities. But I guess I’m just blinded by wokeness.

Jonah Ford

Loved this episode. I'm a PhD candidate in philosophy who low-key hates academic philosophy, and this stupid letter is a perfect encapsulation of why. Incidentally, it's also catnip for my research project: how notions of objectivity are weaponized to legitimate the silencing of marginalized voices and their knowledge claims, under the guise of 'reasonableness', and how this perpetuates structural ignorance. Peter Shamshiri has popularized the idea that law schools and departments are actually hella conservative/reactionary, and the same is *absolutely* true of philosophy departments. I very much look forward to your upcoming episode on analytic philosophy. Adrian proffered a handful of reasons for why analytic philosophy is so insufferable, and, anecdotally, can confirm every syllable.

Nina V~

i'm lighting a candle for adrian's sanity as he has to read that terf dribble, HOWEVER, i am gleefully awaiting hearing y'all tear that author a new one soon

Nina V~

also, as someone in stem, i lovingly stand hand-in-hand with my woke compatriots in the humanities. the only way we're making through this is together (insert gimli "you have my axe" jpeg)

Nina V~

i genuinely didn't know that analytical/ academic philosophy Was A Thing until now, but the way they briefly described it immediately made me go, "OH, OF COURSE these assholes are Like This."

Joy

I wish I could project this audio into the minds of the provosts at [redacted name of the university that employs me]!

Kira Hamilton

Moira it’s a really good thing you didn’t watch the most recent season of euphoria… truly nauseatingly conservative and Sam levinson truly really loathes women and thinks they’re all stupid whores. It’s astonishing to watch

Alex

As someone who spends a lot of time in STEM academic spaces and that side of The University (TM), always super interesting to hear what's going on in the humanities side and how they're differentially affected by attacks on academia, research, and curiosity. Especially so with this episode! Thanks for the deep dive on this absolute disaster of a report!

Meg C

Same here

Kathryn L Appleton

This blue Catholic Alabamian loves you guys. Keep doing what you're doing. I wish I could share your insights, but not my strength. KEEP DOING WHAT YOU'RE DOING!

Will Robinson

the Derrida bit is just absurd. I wrote my undergraduate thesis on modality/meaning in language using Différance, Plato's Cratylus, & Saussure's handbook - 70+ pages, three semesters of reading and writing, capstone paper after doing a significant percentage of Hegel & Heidegger, I'm not sure I ever actually got anywhere with Derrida. such a weird hill for these right wing ghouls to die on.

Sinead Kennedy

Thank you both. Really enjoyed this episode!

MARIA PRAMAGGIORE

The ‘crisis in the humanities’ has defined my academic career in the humanities (PhD in 1993). There are bad actors ‘outside’ academia who must be opposed and there are also academic leaders who have failed for decades to make the best public arguments on behalf of the humanities. I’m not blaming victims: there has been a well funded concerted campaign against education. I wish we’d had savvier and strategic leaders in public facing venues decades ago. The citizens who fund education still ( just barely) believe it adds value to society but they are less and less likely to support it, and that’s a disgrace—shame on the venal Right, who wants to privatize and profit and shame on higher education for failing to defend itself properly.

Jenny

The biology / public health folks in the US and China (that I've worked with) pronounce it like "plus one" too!

Jenny

And my pipette... And my code!

Maxwell

Adrian leaving absolutely no survivors, holy shit. There’s smoke coming out of my speakers as I listen to this. Side note: Casting my vote for y’all to do a twelve part series on the horrors of analytic philosophers.

Rosie

Oh, you like Butler? Name their first album

Rosie

Absolutely! Though as a mathematician, gotta say I'm pretty low on equipment/weapons. Chalk? Waste paper basket?

Nina V~

it's ok, i'm a chemistry student, you can borrow some acid or something ;D

Regina

Spot on! Please do the episode on analytic philosophy. The below one-dimensional understanding of truth and reality of some of their scholars and the compulsion to take things fucking literally is really at the core so much anti-woke rhetoric. Once read Kathleen Stock‘s work on fiction (before her anti-trans phase) once and it’s such a mind-numbing and boring piece of scholarship imaginable. Maybe that was the real reason students protested her…

Ren

All the handwringing about relativism is sending me back to the evangelical propaganda summer camp that my parents send me to in the early 2000s (Worldview Academy).

Brian

I had the great displeasure of having Diermeyer and Zimmerman (of AUTX fame) as provost and president, respectively, while in undergrad. Granted, that institution is embarrassing for more reasons than just those two, but god every time they come up it’s for something awful.

OhLordyAmina

Trust as someone that went with the “safe” major, (fashion business) I wish I would have just majored in English. Hoping I’ll be able to afford a Master’s in Teaching English one day. I love literature so much.

Rosie

💀

Krys K

I have it on good authority that trigonometry is a weapon.

Maddie

Adrian said Daniel Diermeier and I SCREAMED! As someone who used to work under him in Vanderbilt’s farce of a “free speech” department, this report comes as no surprise. Thanks for another great episode guys!

Astraea

And my telescope! And the computer whose screen I mostly stare at instead of getting to look through telescopes.

Astraea

I've said it before and I'll say it again: in addition to their ignorant contempt of the humanities, these fuckin' dweebs have NO IDEA how the hard sciences actually work. I am a research astrophysicist. I had a conversation with a colleague TODAY in which the phrase "Your best-fit result is meaningless without an error bar" came up repeatedly. Because it is! These people (meant in the most pejorative possible sense) do this bullshit, I'm-being-so-subtle appeal to authority all the time, where they treat the hard sciences as exact, perfect, infallible, and not subject in any way to subjective human choices. This is simply not true!! Yes, we are measuring the physical world, and yes, we do our best to remove or control for our own biases. But our knowledge is *never* perfect - talk to me about gravity sometime, I dare you - and describing and quantifying that imperfection is arguably *the thing that makes science, science!* I keep hearing these overconfident pale males in Silicon Valley and conservative academic departments using the physical sciences to take swings at the humanities and the "soft" sciences, and my overwhelming feeling is basically, "Bro, you don't even go here. Stop." *side note: astrophysics is hard, yes, but you know what's way harder? Humans. They lie to you and to themselves, there's literally as many ways to be human as there are humans, and if you're dealing with anything more complicated than "Are humans social creatures?" you're basically trying to chip away obsidian with an overcooked spaghetti noodle. Mad respect to my social science and humanities colleagues!

Astraea

The amount of contempt I have for economists who claim they're doing "hard" science while actively getting every fucking thing wrong truly cannot be measured.

Astraea

I listen on AntennaPod and I've never had this issue. Just as another data point.

Teague Morris

I'm also a PhD student in a pretty analytic department and was gonna leave a comment like this lol (might still I guess) but definitely +1

Teague Morris

WRT to the analytic philosophy episode (please do it), I think a necessary thing to discuss is the ideological capture of many departments (including mine) by aspects of TESCREAL ideology. Part of the issue with analytic philosophers' idea that they are clearer and better thinkers than everyone else is that they also seem to believe that they are (perhaps uniquely) immunized against the financial and structural incentives of the modern corporatized university, which means that departments including mine are easy marks for e.g. chairs endowed by Peter Thiel, Dario Amodei, and other TESCREAL and reactionary figures. (I recently sent an email around my department complaining about references to LessWrong . com in a speech by a prominent philosopher inaugurating a new "AI and philosophy" chair and speaking series that we're starting and seems to be funded by dark money, and the amount of my colleagues that either (1) had no idea what was going on or (2) have come into philosophy by way of LW, SSC, EAForums or other TESCREAL pipelines was astounding). Because of this combination of pride and diffidence, and because of (probably intentional (?) and successful) attempts by figures in the TESCREAL scene like Nick Bostrom to infiltrate analytic departments, ideas like "alignment" and discussions of, say, "positive eugenics" are now endemic in analytic departments (especially "top" departments, but that's another story). (Relatedly, I recently wrote a section in my dissertation arguing that analytic ideas paved the way for this takeover and also the willingness of many people to take stupid claims about LLMs seriously).

Teague Morris

anyway yay it's my first Patreon comment ever, sorry that it's long 💀

Teague Morris

OOF did not mean to make LW hyperlink, everyone please don't give them traffic

Jonah Ford

Thanks! I'm both excited and also questioning my sanity for trying to do a PhD. Lol Have you settled on a project yet? What kind of stuff do you focus on?

Nick

Speaking as a professionally-employed analytic philosopher: pleease do the analytic philosophy episode!! I want to hear all the takes on our benighted discipline

OuijaFBabysMama

@moiradonegan Wait you’re “too old” or “too woke” for Euphoria? I legit couldn’t understand. Not sure it matters haha, just curious

D

I await the work on LLM credulity with eagerness.

Astraea

I have nothing to contribute to an analytical philosophy discussion, but congrats on your first comment, and LONG-COMMENT SOLIDARITY FOREVER! I do try to write short comments, I swear I do, but somehow I end up with novels anyway. :)

Cali

I have to say that just in general, you two have been a huge influence on my future pursuits as an overly woke academic. I have an MSW and this podcast has lit a fire in me to continue my academic pursuits and get a PhD (from Stanford perhaps) to get even more woke and insufferable so thank you.

testosteronefemme

wait, re: the replication crisis - i thought it was mostly a medical/psych/sociology thing? due to just the basic fact that studying human flesh machines is really complicated even before you add in the non-destructive technique limitation? i wouldn't expect Literature to have a replication crisis?? or is the entire thing made up? esp bc its not like stem fields are immune to p-hacking.

Astraea

The replication crisis isn't made up - it's very much a real thing. And it makes sense, too - a lot of fields use p = 0.05 as their cutoff for "significant," which is the same as saying "there's a 5% change my result is random, and not significant at all." This is, in fact, *way* too high a chance. In my field, if you try to use p = 0.05 as your cutoff for significance, you'll be laughed out of town (and then yelled at). The minimum in my field is 0.3%, but <0.00006% is preferred (a 5 sigma result). But I work in the physical sciences, not in the self-cognizant human flesh-machines sciences. We demand 5sigma results because we can actually achieve that. Polisci and econ, etc often never come close to that level of significance. (My private theory is that if they didn't accept p < 0.05, they'd never have any results at all.) All that having been said: talking about a replication crisis in the humanities is completely nonsensical. It's like complaining that science has not yet proven/disproven the existence of God. Like...sure, I guess, but that's actually not what it's for, my guy!

testosteronefemme

oooooooh actually that makes a lot of sense, i hadn't thought about the p value itself, but that tracks. kinda reminds me of process control stuff - a 5% fail rate is in fact way too high for a lot of applications esp in med device/aerospace. but yeah totally agreed! gender trouble does not need to be replicated, that's not how that field works!!

Ben Alpers

Just cause so many people complained about Moira's pronunciation of Bari Weiss's first name, I feel duty bound to complain about Adrian's pronunciation of Sean Wilentz's last name. It's Will-ENTZ (I did my grad degree in his department and taught for him in the American Studies program he led immediately after I got my PhD)

Dan Kobza

I also say “yes, please do an analytic philosophy episode.”

Kemplify

God that was so boring (the 'report', not the episode). Honestly they should release the same 'crisis of humanities' PDF verbatim every few years and see if anyone notices, b/c they all blend together.

Isaac Erbele

I just want to say this is the episode that got me to join the patreon. I'm just in academic medicine, but oof.

Ruth

Ha! As a climate scientist I was kind of surprised by the characterization of the field as one where folks can be popularly known four their scholarly work rather than some public friendly translation of the field. There’s definitely something to it though! Like public targeted IPCC reports are based on and include very recent scholarly work, for example. I think some of this is due to the youth of the field.

Ruth

That being said, if anyone’s coming out with a book that isn’t a textbook and reaches the public, that’d definitely be seen as a departure from typical scholarly work

Murphy

So sad the news today out of Cambridge.

Sarah Chinn

The shoddiest part of the report’s analysis of the hunter-gatherer article is that peer review is almost always doubly anonymous— the reviewers don’t know who the author is and the author doesn’t know who the reviewers are. So the fact that the authors were all women is most likely irrelevant since the reviewers wouldn’t have known that.