HRI Mission

Shaping the Future of Humanities Research

At HRI, we believe humanities research is indispensable to every aspect of campus intellectual and social life. We cultivate disciplinary depth and rigor in the traditional humanities disciplines, supporting thoughtful and innovative scholarly inquiry. We also convene partners in the sciences, the arts, and the communities we live in, seeking interdisciplinary collaboration where it’s warranted.

We push the boundaries of what’s imaginable and we question the questions themselves. We engage with audiences beyond the academy in order to test the limits and possibilities of what we do in the public square. And we are dynamic: we are not simply responding to the present but trying to shape it — and to anticipate the future as well.

That future is on the table as never before. As a community of interdisciplinary practitioners, we face existential threats from the devaluation of humanistic knowledge in an age of unprecedented technological innovation and political polarization. Our commitment is to promoting critically engaged interdisciplinary work;  sponsoring unsettling conversations;  supporting colleagues as they seek to advance their research, teaching, and community-based projects; advocating for freely available free expression; and working collaboratively for the short- and long-term common good.

Defining “the Humanities”

HRI takes as its guide Section 3(a) of the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965, as amended:

“The term ‘humanities’ includes, but is not limited to, the study of the following: language, both modern and classical; linguistics; literature; history; jurisprudence; philosophy; archaeology; comparative religion; ethics; the history, criticism and theory of the arts; those aspects of the social sciences which have humanistic content and employ humanistic methods; and the study and application of the humanities to the human environment with particular attention to reflecting our diverse heritage, traditions, and history and to the relevance of the humanities to the current conditions of national life.”