You can spare me the condescending tone, Squeers. I have a Ph.D from the Humanities and I teach in the Humanities. Therefore, I have full knowledge of how it operates.

You're appear so embodied in the slogans and perspectives of the Humanities that you can't see it from the outside. One thing you should have learnt during your Ph.D (you did mention you have one, didn't you?) is to examine phenomena objectively, or at least aim to. You should have learnt critical thinking skills. These skills can, and should, be applied to all perspectives - left, right, progressive, conservative. But the Humanities and Social Sciences do not; they only ever turn their critical eye toward anything remotely conservative or right. Ask yourself this: why should 'the establishment' be opposed? Humanities, like a true science, should first and foremost aim to understand, not oppose. Opposing is political, not educational. Ask yourself this also: what is the need to oppose the 'status quo'? Again, opposing it is political, not educational. You've put these motivations as your first principle i.e. radical opposition before understanding.

Students should be taught to understand all the various elements that go in to making our (and other) society/culture/civilisation. Moreover, even before this, they should be taught reading, writing, thinking, and researching skills.

Aristocrat,
I can only respond to what you say, and there was nothing in your post to indicate you had a grasp of what I'm on about. There still isn't.
One can get a PhD in just about anything, so that in itself doesn't indicate much--indeed I've seen some very soft ones indeed. Mine was anything but, yet I don't think it counts for much on its own.
Your posts tell me it's you who's taking a partisan position, whereas my posting history here indicates my independent position. I'm not fomenting for either side, but find fault with both. This is plain above. My position is against the current dystopia, which is not a construct of the left, however I'm also critical of the left's failure to have any real impact upon it.
But since you have nothing interesting to say, and your last is sheer nonsense--the Humanities have as much conservative scholarship as radical, probably more!--I'll keep my condescending tone to myself.

Squeers, if I am misunderstanding your posts, then that may be more of a reflection of your written expression (you were taught to write clearly and concisely in university, weren't you?).

Please point out where I have been partisan. My criticism has been consistent in that academics ought to turn their critical eye on their own "progressive" valuations, rather than solely on conservative ones. Also, please state what conservative scholars are taught in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The only thinker I know of, as stated previously, is Durkheim. Yet, he is hidden away into small sections of Sociology courses (which is dominated by Marxist inspired 'conflict theorists').

I don't have time or inclination to do your petty-fogging bidding. The Humanities incorporate a great many disciplines and the respective scholars attack and defend all political persuasions. To say that the Humanities has a left-wing agenda is nonsense. If you want to sample some of the other persuasion, try Quadrant, or any number of the thousands of journals.

Squeers, if "The Humanities incorporate a great many disciplines and the respective scholars attack and defend all political persuasions", then you should have no problem naming which conservatives are defended.

Plato is not only conservative but essential in understanding anything at all about ourselves. The enlightenment further frames our modern values, the state, our legal system even our morality. The political/economic conversation from Hume, Smith, Paine, Rosseau, Marx, Shumpeter, Keynes and others provide some of the essential detail for any student to even begin to understand the key concepts which determine our contemporary world.

Complimenting the above rather dry material are a variety of novelists and philosophers which have made pivotal contributions to understanding modern man: Dickens, Orwell, Conrad, Mann, Camus, Kafka, Neitzsche, Heidegger and many others.

Unfortunately, the humanities have largely departed from the above tradition which at least attempts to focus on rational causes and instead has become focused on symptoms.

One way to demonstrate this difference is that between Neitzsche and Foucault. Fred's canvas includes the entire spectrum of power, its very nature within each of us. Foucault on the other hand is looking for how power manifests and oppresses one group or another, whether its inmates in prisons, asylums or a gender..

The whole post modern, deconstruction trip descends into these valid and even interesting investigations which expose all manner of hidden oppression. But as I said, these are symptoms. The humanities have effectively become entirely about these symptoms as the rational tradition has been abandoned.

The end result is that those indoctrinated by this symptopia, like Squeers and Aristocrat, are incapable of logically framing the human condition absent oppressors and victims. Where the humanities once offered solutions and inspiration to the entire spectrum of society and thought - the descent into symptoms and victims has eviscerated its agency. It can offer nothing to society as it almost triumphantly celebrates not knowing how society works aside from the manifestation of oppression.