
1. Critical thinking.
Critical thinking allows one to have not just
many jobs but many careers and many roles.
I think about this as living not just the length
of one’s life but the breadth of it. Nearly 200
years ago, The Yale Report of 1828: Liberal
Education and Collegiate Life asserted that
“The two great points to be gained in intel-
lectual culture, are the discipline and the
furniture of the mind; expanding its powers,
and storing it with knowledge. The former
of these is, perhaps, the more important of
the two. Those branches of study should be
prescribed, and those modes of instruction
adopted, which are best calculated to teach
the art of fixing the attention, directing the
train of thought, analyzing a subject proposed
for investigation; following, with accurate
discrimination, the course of argument;
balancing nicely the evidence presented
to the judgment; awakening, elevating, and
controlling the imagination; arranging, with
skill, the treasures which memory gathers;
rousing and guiding the powers of genius.”
Why is this ability to think more import-
ant than what you store in memory? In a
February 9, 2019 article in the Wall Street
Journal, our Louisville job market was
ranked #8 most vulnerable to automation
by the Brookings Institution, with an average
of 48% of our jobs at risk. Machines have
memory but not minds. That means both
critical thinking and creativity will be inte-
gral to the jobs of the future.
2. Creativity.
I have been preaching the creativity gospel
at least since 1998. Machines can do pretty
much anything we do faster, cheaper, and
with less attitude. The human ability to
create is our dierentiator.
Daniel Pink declares “The future belongs to
a very dierent kind of person, with a very
dierent kind of mind—creators and empa-
thizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning
makers. These people will reap society’s
richest rewards and share its greatest joys.”
He goes on to say, “In a world enriched by
abundance but disrupted by the automation
and outsourcing of white-collar work, every-
one must cultivate an artistic sensibility. We
may not all be Dali or Degas. But today we
must all be designers.” (A Whole New Mind:
Why Right Brainers will Rule the Future,
2016).
3. Collaboration.
Often today, teams will be working with mem-
bers from across the globe. There are few lone
rangers anymore. We must come together
quickly, bond as a team, deliver results, and
then be prepared to move on. Most of the
time, when people are let go, it is because they
cannot work well with others. We hire for
hard skills and we fire for soft skills.
Additionally, collaboration is helped when
we have shared metaphors and when we
have empathy for one another. That’s where
storytelling comes in. The activity of telling
or writing stories, can accelerate collabo-
ration while honoring diverse perspectives.
The social sciences and humanities teach us
not only how to tell a story but also how to
listen for one and interpret when necessary.
4. Communication.
In Mortimer Adler’s book How to Speak;
How to Listen, to communicate is to establish
something in common. To communicate, one
must understand the other person, be able to
see the world from their perspective. Oral
and written skills are among the top most
desired in college students and yet they are
areas that are always listed as weaknesses
among graduates.
Many years ago at Ohio State University at a
student show, I heard an audience member
yell to a performer, “I see you.” I had not
heard that before and then I noticed other
people yelling it as well. As I looked into it
more, I learned that it was traceable back to
an African tradition of greeting a person by
saying, “I see you.” It wasn’t just saying “I see
you – your physical presence,” but rather that
“I acknowledge you – the story you bring,
the ancestors that brought you here. I rec-
ognize your presence in this world.” How
very powerful.
The traditional response to “I see you” is “I
am here.” Why is that so important to com-
munication? To be fully present to another
and to their reality, to simply sit with them as
they process a moment in time, is the greatest
gift one can give. That is what we see in the
plaintive and poignant Hebrew declaration,
“Hineni.” Translation: Here I am.
Linguistic competence, cross-cultural com-
munication, empathy—these skills are more
likely to be elicited by a broad-based liberal
arts education.
5. (Connection.)
In closing, I would like to venture a fifth
C— Connection or Connectedness. I firmly
believe that we want to belong to something
larger than ourselves, that we long to see
connection and feel connected. The social
sciences and humanities teach us not only
how to tell a story but also how to listen for
one and interpret it when necessary. So, in
the spirit of transcendentalist Ralph Waldo
Emerson’s The American Scholar, I would
like to end with this 500 BCE non-denomi-
national Sanskrit prayer meant to be recited
together by teacher and student.
Om, may we be protected together
May we be nourished together
May we work together with great vigor
May our study be enlightening
May no obstacle arise between us
Om peace, peace, peace
Continued from page 1
4 | louisville.edu/artsandsciences
THE LIBERAL ARTS
IN A GLOBAL ECONOMY
The future belongs
to a very dierent
kind of person, with
a very dierent kind
of mind—creators
and empathizers,
pattern recognizers,
and meaning makers.
These people will
reap society’s richest
rewards and share its
greatest joys.
—Daniel Pink
To see a video of President’s Bendapudi lecture in its entirety, go to uofl.me/pbk-lecture-2019.