Tell us about this particular survey and report, funded by the Mellon Foundation. What are some of the big surprises?

From the beginning, the Indicators wanted to take an expansive approach to the humanities, trying not to think of it in terms of academic disciplines, but as a continuum from early childhood reading through college and a university education, which is, I think where most people will tend to think of it as existing, and then into more general public forms, such as museums. And so when we developed a survey, we continued that very expansive approach. 

In the development of the survey, we realized that we basically couldn’t ask about the humanities directly so we ask most of the questions without ever using the word “humanities” until the very end. And then we sort of point back to the things that we just talked about and say, “so what we just talked about, people often put under the umbrella of the humanities.”  

Mellon’s support was critical, because to survey 5,000 people is actually quite a generous undertaking. But it proved to be really valuable because there are so many people engaging with the humanities, and also so much diversity in how these people engage with the humanities. There are so many key points of near-unity, but a lot of diversity that’s worth looking at more closely. .  .  .