Stanford Report, March 19, 2013
Rachel
Maddow urges students to master the art of argument in her first return to
Stanford
Stanford alumna and MSNBC
television host Rachel Maddow insists that an education in the humanities is a
crucial asset in today's job market, illustrating with her own story how the
ability to make good arguments and write well powered her career in advocacy,
activism and the national media.
By Benjamin Hein
The Humanities at Stanford
The Humanities at Stanford
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Speaking to members of the Stanford community, Rachel Maddow said that her education in the humanities was indispensable to her past and present success in advocacy and activism.
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Asked by students what kind of
major she looks for in a successful job candidate, Rachel Maddow, the popular
television host and best-selling author, did not hesitate in her answer.
"I look for people who have done mathematics. Philosophy. Languages. "And really," she
concluded, "History is kind of the king."
After earning her bachelor's
degree from Stanford in public policy in 1994 and winning a Rhodes Scholarship
to study at Oxford University, Maddow spent the next decade raising awareness
about HIV/AIDS and fighting for health reform in British and American prisons.
She said to make an impact in the world and to change hearts and minds, she
needed to know how to convince others and how "to make good
arguments."
And that meant knowing how to
write well. On Saturday, during an evening conversation with students and other
Stanford affiliates, Maddow said that an education in a humanities subject was
indispensable to her past and present success in advocacy and activism. The
event was organized by Stanford's "Ethics in Society" program.
While a student at Stanford,
Maddow took numerous classes in humanities subjects, including philosophy and
history. It was at Stanford, she said, that she learned how to structure and
present a persuasive argument.
In today's tough job market,
she said, perfecting this skill is a must.
"Most people can't
write," she said. "Only one in 50 resumes is somebody who can
write."
Poor reasoning is not a
winning argument, neither for employment nor, in fact, for anything in life.
Learning how to write a resume that reasons its way from A to B to C to D is
very important, she said. And this, she insisted, is the skill taught in the
humanities.
Studying the
humanities in Silicon Valley
At Stanford, only about 9
percent of undergraduate students major in a humanities subject – a
surprisingly low number given a world-class faculty and programs that
consistently rank among the top three in the country. Many incoming students
are drawn to the boom in Silicon Valley and a career in the technology sector.
In past years, the largest and fastest growing major on campus has been
computer science, with class enrollments frequently exceeding 1,000 students.
Maddow, who noted that she
likes "techies," sees great value in an education in technology and
engineering.
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| Rachel Maddow, right, with Rob Reich, associate professor of political science. |
But she also insisted that an
education in the humanities is equally, if not more, important. "We need
people who are good at explaining facts, who are good at editing, and who can
visualize things in creative ways. We need good artists and we need good
writers."
Above all, she said, we need
people who can create things, who can come up with
new content.
"It's not to say that
technological innovation is not a creative enterprise," she added.
"Google changed the world, absolutely. But it didn't make the world. It organized it.
"And that's great, but if
you're not creating things, and all you do is organize other people's stuff,
then you're Wikipedia. And Wikipedia is awesome, but who is going to write the
stuff that goes into Wikipedia?"
Nonetheless, Maddow praised
technology for revolutionizing the way people can access content and locate
facts: "The landscape for new cultural creation has never been richer
because of technological and organizational advances."
In the end, however, content
creators win the day. "I need good writers rather than good web designers.
And they are much harder to find."
A career in
activism
Ever since she arrived at
Stanford, Maddow has been a passionate activist for gay rights causes and
national health care reform. As one of only two openly gay students in her undergraduate
cohort, Maddow experienced first-hand the profound alienation from society that
gay people faced at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. She quickly became
engaged in numerous AIDS-related organizations and eventually wrote an honors
thesis on the dehumanization of HIV/AIDS victims.
More recently, Maddow has
revisited the dehumanization of marginalized groups in American society,
especially the gulf between civilians and soldiers who fought in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
In her new best-selling book, Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power, she highlights how the
alienation felt by many veterans today approaches the experience of AIDS
victims during the 1990s.
Americans do not share in the
sacrifices made by U.S. armed forces, she said.
"Going to war, being at
war, should be painful for the entire country, from the start. Freedom isn't free shouldn't be a bumper sticker – it should be a
policy," she writes in Drift (Crown Publishers, 2012).
At its core, Maddow's argument
is a deeply historical one. Drift, she said, tells the story of
how the nation has drifted away – both for economic and political reasons –
from the constitutional mechanisms that govern engagement in war.
Advice for
Stanford's students
Over the remainder of the
evening, Maddow shared life lessons with students in the audience.
She encouraged undergraduates
to major in something that is not interdisciplinary and instead to "dive
deep into one single subject" at least once before completing college.
Writing an honors thesis, for example, teaches the analytical rigor of
long-form writing, a first and crucial step to learning how to be persuasive.
Asked about her experience in
coming out as an openly gay student, Maddow responded that she thought of it as
an ethical responsibility. "If you come out, you are making the same step
marginally easier for others, as others did before you.
"If you do not pay that
back to the universe, then the universe Will. Kick. Your. Ass."
Benjamin Hein is a doctoral candidate in history at Stanford. For more news
about the humanities at Stanford, visit the Human
Experience.
