Insights from the International Humanities Summit in Brisbane, Australia, November 13–15, 2019

 

November 26, 2019

Summit

 The Australian Academy of Humanities (AHH) turned 50 this year, and asked themselves what they should do to celebrate. They would organize a symposium, of course, but there was nothing new to that—they had organized a symposium every single year of their existence—so they wracked their brains to come up with something really special.

And their idea was quite brilliant: organize an International Humanities Summit and invite delegates from humanities academies around the world to come to Australia to talk about their work.

They asked delegates to report under three rubrics:

  • What are the key developments or shifts in the humanities over the past decade in your jurisdiction?

  • What are the top three priority issues for your organisation with respect to the humanities?

  • How are the humanities defined in your jurisdiction/organisation? Are the creative arts/ creative practice or cultural leaders from outside academia included?

They also scheduled thematic sessions on the following topics:

  • Humanities futures – diversity & next generation support

  • Setting research priorities for the humanities

  • The challenges of multilingualism in the humanities

  • The skills requirements for the future humanities workforce (inside and outside academia)

  • The role of international humanities organisations

  • Advising governments/articulating the value of our disciplines

In the end about a dozen humanities academies accepted their invitation, including the Hong Kong Academy of the Humanities, which sent our Secretary, Professor Douglas Robinson; the AAH, which proved to be generously funded by the Australian government, subsidized the invitations to the tune of AU$2000 per delegate. That sum covered airfare, hotel, and meals.

 The delegate from the Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappe (KNAW), or Royal Netherlands Academy of the Arts and Sciences, Professor Ineke Sluiter, was surprised that she was the only European delegate—if we don’t count the British Academy (represented by two delegates, Robin Jackson and Simon Goldhill) as European. And indeed the region represented was primarily Asia-Pacific: in addition to Australia and Hong Kong there were academies from the PRC, Korea, Japan, New Zealand, Indonesia, India, and the United States.

Also present at the Summit was Professor Samuel Lieu, President of the Union Académique Internationale (UAI), originally from Hong Kong; Prof. Lieu had visited Hong Kong a few weeks earlier and had a very nice lunch at the China Club with the HKAH Executive Committee. He was very happy to be able to tell everyone at the Summit that the HKAH had made him an Honorary Fellow. (Because the UAI can only be represented by a single academy from each country, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences is a full member of the UAI and the Hong Kong Academy of Humanities is an associate member.)

One of the really obvious differences among us was funding: the Australian Academy was not the only one generously funded by their government; and several were also extraordinarily well-endowed through private philanthropy. It seemed the HKAH was the only academy that depended solely on membership fees for income. There were also significant age differences: the American Academy of Arts and Sciences was founded in 1780; the British Academy in 1909; the Australian Academy of Humanities in 1969; and the Hong Kong Academy of the Humanities in 2011.

Most of the academies reported actively liaising with government, advising and advocating on matters related to the humanities—and had good advice for any academy only beginning to do so. Simon Goldhill of the British Academy, for example, said that “The best way to persuade government is to scare them—they’re terrified of social strife, and if you can help them prevent that, you have their ear.”

Others talked about advocating for the humanities with the general public. The British Academy has been working very hard to develop a persuasive narrative for the humanities to rival the one that works so well for the natural sciences. KNAW in the Netherlands has launched a massive research project titled Anchoring Innovation, with the goal of charting the cultural histories that have grounded both the development and the reception of STEM innovations—with a special focus on the STEM innovations that have gone awry because their scientific advocates thought of them as purely technical and didn’t give a thought to cultural anchoring. Nirmala Menon from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) also reported her academy’s remarkable successes in convincing government funding bodies to listen to them on the massive shaping influences what they call LEAF—Liberal Education in Art Fields—has on modern culture.

On the third and final day of the International Humanities Summit, Dr. Tina Parolin, Executive Director of the AAH, and Dr. Kylie Brass, AAH Research & Policy Director, led a session on common concerns for all of the academies represented. These ended up being four: language learning, branding or narrativizing the humanities for popular understanding and support, gender equity and diversity, and funding/philanthropy. And speaking of branding—and language learning—it was mentioned that in English “humanity” is the noun for both “being human” and “being humane,” but that that nice convergence didn’t work in every language!

In closing, Simon Goldhill from the British Academy mentioned that they award the annual Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Understanding, a £25,000 award for the nonfiction book each year that, as the name suggests, promotes global understanding. Academies around the world are encouraged to nominate nonfiction books published in their jurisdictions for this prize.

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Hong Kong Academy of Humanities HKAH