In practically every finance internship interview, I’m asked some variation of the same question—why Art History?
I’ve come to understand art history as the history of culture: how we creatively express ourselves, respond to the world around us, and protest. Art is constantly in conversation with itself; artists revisiting and reinventing themes, variations, and subject matter. There’s a reason art has persisted across cultures and centuries, why we find joy in music, books, theater, and painting, and why we inherently seek aesthetics. Art, I answer, is a universal form of communication. Art is part of humanity.
But make no mistake—I am a STEM person through and through. I am concentrating in Applied Math at Harvard, with Art History as a secondary. Math and physics were my favorite subjects throughout high school, and I would much rather do a problem set than draft an outline for a paper. I could go on for hours about how much I love solving problems and the beauty of numbers. Still, I inherited my secondary-love for the humanities from my parents; growing up, my mom dragged my brothers and me to art museums while my dad filled family dinners with conversations on world wars, government policies, and literature. Hard copies of Supreme Court opinions and The Atlantic articles even frequent the kitchen counter.
Naturally, in my increasingly math-heavy course schedule, I’ve become more removed from such discussions. I now sit in relatively larger lecture classes, scribbling down derivations and equations. The felt absence of sitting around a small table, analyzing a novel or historical text, has only made me appreciate the humanities more—what it teaches and inspires.
The STEM-versus-humanities debate is by no means a new one. STEM is strongly considered a more practical discipline, offering stable and lucrative job prospects as well as being more rigorous and time-intensive. STEM courses demand challenging problem sets, long lab hours, and exams designed to be unfinishable that require a conceptual understanding of abstract material. A recent Harvard Crimson article published the difference in hours spent weekly on coursework by concentration, reigniting this debate; computer science, math, and statistics courses require, on average, over nine hours of work, whereas English and government require around five.
With that, many often cast aside studying the humanities as not only easier but also significantly less valuable for career opportunities. Starting STEM-degree salaries have historically been higher and more stable than humanities ones, providing higher return on investments for a college education; it’s a running pop culture joke that English majors are “useless.” In that respect, there is an undeniable privilege in being able to study any discipline without financial concerns.
But dismissing the humanities as worthless is vastly flawed—the humanities are invaluable to further the human condition. Debating the time difference between problem sets and readings, or even time spent in class—the comparison in rigor—fails to understand the difference and even purpose between the two disciplines. The value of an education lies not in time lost but in knowledge gained. The humanities explore what it means to be human and how we interact with others in larger society, teaching skills few STEM classes can, and inspiring what needs to be innovated.
While STEM teaches problem-solving and analytical thought, the humanities teach effective communication, creativity, and how to construct original arguments. They teach us how to critically examine ideas, articulate opinions, and build upon others’ perspectives. Conversations exploring justice or philosophical questions where we can learn from one another, particularly on a college campus, reveals where it is that we need to innovate, rewrite policy, or research more. And, studying the humanities teaches perhaps the most important skill—writing.
David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs, has noted writing as an invaluable skill that has become quite rare. “How you communicate with other people, how you interact with other people, how you express yourself will have a huge impact on your success,” said Solomon in a 2019 speech. It is mastering communication that inspires and influences people to improve and ultimately spark change—a skill the humanities, not STEM, instills.
Even so, at a liberal arts institution like Harvard, concentrations are intentionally not pre-professional. Our education equips us instead with the tools to learn how to think. The humanities have pushed me to think in vastly different but similarly complex ways than STEM. I’ve found it more difficult to come up with an idea on the spot in class than to prepare for a problem I know I will see some variation of on an exam. The way we measure “rigor” shouldn’t be solely based on hours spent on work. I struggle with the ambiguity of open-ended questions without a single answer, like in a math problem. Perfection never exists in the humanities the way it can in STEM.
With the rise of generative AI, we have even greater need for the humanities. ChatGPT’s generic output has highlighted that technology cannot substitute human creativity, a reminder of how the humanities encapsulate the human condition. The release of ChatGPT initially seemed like a threat to the humanities much more than STEM. It could write essays in seconds, summarize dense texts, and analyze historical plots. My high-school English teachers were the first to discuss generative AI’s implications, justifying the value of human writing, and opting for in-class essays to avoid cheating, but similar conversations from science teachers were absent. It was briefly then that STEM felt invincible—a testament to its supposed superiority, the very field that built artificial intelligence in the first place.
Yet, AI and its uses have evolved. ChatGPT can write high-level code, solve Stat 110 problem sets, and generate supply and demand graphs more accurately than it can compare art history pieces or write an excellent novel. Of course, over the past few years, ChatGPT has undeniably become better at high-level writing and summarizing. But we are quick to recognize ChatGPT writing because it is formulaic and unnatural; it cannot write a short story or powerful poem the way humans can, nor can it produce brand-new music or physical art. It fails to originate thought and it fails to imagine, pulling from a database of all of human ideas rather than creating its own. There’s the difference again—there is right and wrong in a math problem, but there is a scale of greatness and beauty in writing.
In our increasingly technological age and volatile political climate, the humanities are more essential than ever; humanities are why we have lessons from the past on how to build the future. Understanding past historical situations is crucial to understanding threats to democracy and how to react, and informed perspectives on our world better inform our decisions, especially on a national scale. Moreover, effective communication inspires political and social change, which we learn from mastering the complexities of language and human emotions. Art, for one, has served as an important tool for protest, evoking emotion and provocation.
We are trained with critical thinking skills to produce and lead change in our society. Leadership—the ability to influence people—requires an in-depth understanding of what motivates people. It is through language and words that leaders inspire change and through a well grounded knowledge of laws and history that change is properly effected. The humanities gives us this toolbox.
I often think about what my senior-year high school English teacher told us on our first day of class—fiction can teach empathy. Through literature, not problem-solving classes, we learn how to understand one another. We see different perspectives and experiences, allowing us to grow and relate. We must ask the questions that humanities force us to think through and challenge our notions. As much as we need to understand the physical world around us, we must also understand humans—each other, and ourselves.
Our world is built on both science and the humanities. To truly innovate our world—of both man and nature—we must devote ourselves to engaging with humans and their creative expressions.
Meena Behringer ’27 (meenabehringer@college.harvard.edu) writes Forum for the Independent.