In response to Christine Truong's Jan. 7 column, "How to read Whitman and understand life."
Ms. Truong points out the absurdity in measuring the humanities' worth by their monetary payoff, but I feel as though she passed up an opportunity to call attention to the transition of the American university from a begetter of thinkers to a begetter of workers. The gradual removal of the humanities from the University's locus of attention, discussion and funding is a terrifyingly clear reflection of the way our nation feels about education, its purposes and its sources of validity. That process is happening more quickly at ASU than it is at most universities, and I think it would have been great to have somebody voicing opposition to that in the school's own news publication.
On an equally serious note, "What we talk about when we talk about Whitman" would have made for a killer title.
Ian Murphy
Undergraduate
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