Tulane School of Liberal Arts Magazine: The Impact Issue, 2024

From the Editors

In choosing “impact” as the theme of this issue of the Tulane School of Liberal Arts Magazine, we are taking the bold position that liberal arts education matters to the world we live in. I say frequently that a liberal arts education is the best training for the challenges and careers of the future. In taking on such ambitious terrain as our purview, what does it mean to have or make an impact? We asked a wide range of our faculty to help us think through this topic. The range of responses demonstrates the intellectual reach of our school, as well as the many ways scholars and teachers from across the liberal arts pose the question itself.

From economic impact to political influence, our social scientists chart what is happening and advocate for change. Our humanists are taking apparently well-worn authors or texts (think Shakespeare) and pushing “reset” on conversations decades or centuries in the making, with social impact that may be harder to immediately measure but is no less real. Interdisciplinary teams such as the one that proposed a successful Sawyer Seminar to the Mellon Foundation look outside the United States and the Gulf South region for models by which to understand and influence local discussions of great import. In my own essay, I examine a plethora of approaches to thinking about impact with examples drawn from these and other Tulanians.

Throughout all these pieces and across the School of Liberal Arts, our scholars, teachers, and students are having an impact. To understand the fullness of that claim, I invite you to explore the contents within. And do let us know how your own Tulane education has had an impact, and what you’re doing in your own life and work to extend that message. We love hearing from you and hope to see you here in New Orleans again soon.