PROFESSOR: The humanities, to me, particularly at MIT,
are essential, indispensable, to help break those infamous walls
and build bridges.
Why?
Because the humanities are the only disciplines of philosophy,
psychology, linguistics, history, writing, women
and gender studies, that can give us
the tools to understand how phenomena connected
to race, to language, to religion, to gender,
to sexual orientation, to have the tools to be
able to understand how they can be used
or misused for domination or for liberation.
This is the only group of studies,
of disciplines, that give us those tools.
As Paulo Freire and [INAUDIBLE] said,
we have to learn to become literate.
Not literate just being able to read, but being able to, as we,
as Freire says, to read the world, and read the word.
Because as we read the word, we have
to understand the impact of what we read on the way
the world works.
And the way the world works often
is based on these hierarchies of power that are often
embedded in the text we read.
But we're not able to critically understand those texts
and see how they create a myth, or maintain those hierarchies
of power, then we're going to become
part of these hierarchies We help maintain them.
So the humanities give us the tools
to be critical about these hierarchies
and be able to distance ourselves from them,
and perchance to even undermine those hierarchies,
and create more inclusive, and more--
kinder, more humane societies.