Thinking Public Health
Tue
22
Date
September 22, 2026
Time
— CDT
Location
DUC 234, Danforth University Center
In-Person
Thinking Public Health is a monthly, in-person gathering for moderated, structured conversations on pressing public health topics. Held under the Chatham House Rule, these discussions encourage open dialogue within the WashU Bursky Public Health community.
As previously communicated, this week’s Thinking Public Health for faculty and staff is a discussion about the Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and the Humanistic Social Sciences (PDF). For those interested, additional readings around this topic are:
Articles or Interviews by the Report authors
- Evan Goldstein and Len Gutkin, Inside the Report That’s Divided the Academy — K. Anthony Appiah, Paul Boghossian, Katherine Fleming, and Sean Wilentz on what’s gone wrong in the humanities. (The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 11, 2026)
- Gary Saul Morson (signatory to the State of Scholarship report), “These Academic Disciplines Risk Forgetting Their Core Task”
(The Washington Post, June 14, 2026) - Kwame Anthony Appiah, Paul Boghossian, Katherine E. Fleming, and Sean Wilentz, “What’s Gone Wrong in the Humanities”
(The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 12, 2026) - Recording of “Advocacy, Objectivity and Method: A Forum to Discuss the WashU/Vanderbilt Special Commission Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and the Humanistic Social Sciences“
Responses and Critiques
- Christopher Newfield, “The Struggle to Face Forward”
(History of the Present,August, 2026) - John K. Wilson, “Vanderbilt’s Board Declares War Against Academic Freedom”
(The Chronicle of Higher Education, August, 5, 2026) - Dwight McBride’s (exec director of CRE2), “The Question Haunting That Humanities Report”
(Inside Higher Ed, June 15, 2026) - Michael Bérubé, “Report on the State of a Report (on the Humanities)”
(Pittsburgh Review of Books, June 12, 2026) - Emma Whitford, “Cited Professors Say the Vanderbilt Report Misrepresents Their Work”
(Inside Higher Ed, June 10, 2026) - Agustín Fuentes, “McCarthyism Dressed Up as an Academic Report”
(The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 12, 2026)
Thinking Public Health is a monthly, in-person gathering for moderated, structured conversations on pressing public health topics. Held under the Chatham House Rule, these discussions encourage open dialogue within the WashU Bursky Public Health community.