The coronavirus pandemic inevitably puts the humanities at a disadvantage.

With everybody focused on the immediate crisis, the need for medical and scientific expertise is obvious – and it is relatively easy to see the relevance of economics, demography, psychology and several other strands of the social sciences. Experts in very specific areas of the humanities such as the history of plagues or “death studies” can bring their insights to the table, but it is far less immediately clear what many other fields can contribute. It seems unlikely that a deep knowledge of baroque opera or Impressionist painting, however valuable in other ways, is going to be of much use during a pandemic or in rebuilding societies afterwards. So where do scholars in the humanities and the . . . .

(for the rest, please see https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/what-can-humanities-offer-covid-era)