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PROFESSOR: The humanities,
to me, particularly at MIT,

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are essential, indispensable, to
help break those infamous walls

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and build bridges.

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Why?

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Because the humanities are the
only disciplines of philosophy,

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psychology, linguistics,
history, writing, women

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and gender studies,
that can give us

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the tools to understand
how phenomena connected

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to race, to language,
to religion, to gender,

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to sexual orientation,
to have the tools to be

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able to understand
how they can be used

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or misused for domination
or for liberation.

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This is the only
group of studies,

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of disciplines, that
give us those tools.

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As Paulo Freire and
[INAUDIBLE] said,

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we have to learn
to become literate.

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Not literate just being able to
read, but being able to, as we,

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as Freire says, to read the
world, and read the word.

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Because as we read
the word, we have

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to understand the impact
of what we read on the way

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the world works.

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And the way the
world works often

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is based on these hierarchies
of power that are often

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embedded in the text we read.

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But we're not able to critically
understand those texts

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and see how they create a myth,
or maintain those hierarchies

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of power, then we're
going to become

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part of these hierarchies
We help maintain them.

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So the humanities
give us the tools

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to be critical about
these hierarchies

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and be able to distance
ourselves from them,

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and perchance to even
undermine those hierarchies,

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and create more
inclusive, and more--

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kinder, more humane societies.