“As the Humanities are downsized, privatized, and commodified, higher education finds itself caught in the paradox of claiming to invest in the future of young people while offering them few intellectual, civic, and moral supports.” Henry Giroux
Dear Students, Prospective Students who are planning to choose our University the Lebanese Canadian University – LCU and Parents:
If the natural sciences are concerned with the physical aspects of the universe, then the Humanities are concerned with human thoughts, and the analysis of human activity and literary creativity, they evaluate this thought, activity and creativity to the benefit of the coming generations thereby contributing to building minds and refinement of souls and the development of nations.
Those skills we teach - reading closely, observing critically, thinking logically and analytically, researching methodically, and writing clearly and persuasively - are not the skills of a single job. We prepare you for much more than that. These are practical skills that can be readily applied to any number of careers, including many that the future has yet to create.
But the Humanities also prepare you for all the other things that happen to us in life, things that truly matter, such as love, beauty, the challenges of leadership, the richness of human experience, the courage to think for oneself and the ability to follow those paths less traveled.
Recently, there have been many discussions questioning the relevancy of a humanities education. Questions about job prospects and outcomes are being recently fielded.
This wasn't just the usual request of "portable skills" and preparation for becoming "global citizens," but something a bit different, and arguably more exciting. Rather, the insistence was on the directly useful and applicable competencies their humanities education at the LCU had provided in terms of the ability to think, interpret, analyze, do archival research, explain data for what's meaningful and what's not, create, communicate and translate across a variety of media and circumstances in the extraordinarily precarious and fast-changing environment of our times. In the arenas of Diplomacy and Strategic Studies, Journalism, Communication, Translation and Living Languages.
On behalf of the teaching and administrative staff, I heartily welcome both new and returning students to the Faculty of Humanities at the Lebanese Canadian University - LCU.