Humanities are alive and well at Davidson College

Having just come back from a very enjoyable day-and-a-half at Davidson College (which has a beautiful campus, by the way, about a half-hour from Charlotte, North Carolina), I was particularly struck by how many students turned out for a talk on Nietzsche on a Tuesday evening (and how many asked questions, and good questions), and also by the College's commitment to humanistic studies, as evidenced not only by the strong philosophy faculty (about which I had known prior to visiting), but also by the size and quality of the German department, an area sadly neglected by some colleges, even though it is central to a serious program of humanistic studies, given the centrality of the German language, and German scholarship and culture, to every field in the humanities.  I was particularly impressed by a student who told me she had transferred from a well-known private research university to Davidson because she felt there was too much pre-professional pressure at her former school, and she wanted to be in an environment more supportive of humanistic study for its own sake.  So kudos to Davidson College!