Three deans reflect on 20 years of the School of Liberal Arts, the decisions that shaped it, and why its future may be its most important chapter.
Twenty years ago, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Tulane University brought together the humanities, social science and arts departments from the former College of Arts and Sciences and Newcomb College to create the School of Liberal Arts (SLA). To mark the School’s 20th anniversary, Dean Brian Edwards (2018–present) invited former deans George Bernstein (2006–08) and Carole Haber (2008–18) to reflect on the decisions that shaped its first two decades, what endured through extraordinary change, and the choices that continue to shape its future. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Brian Edwards: This fall marks the 20th anniversary of the formal founding of the School of Liberal Arts. We’re taking the occasion to look backwards and look forwards. There are stories throughout the magazine about where we’ve been, where we’re going, and what we’re building.
I kept thinking: who better than the people who’ve led the School to reflect on what these 20 years have meant?
(Laughter.)
A dean at another university once told me that dean years are measured like dog years. Carole, did you ever hear this expression?
Carole Haber: No.
Brian: Between the three of us, we’ve probably done about a century.
Carole: We’re very old.
(Laughter.)
Brian: George, you’ve taught me so much about the history of Tulane over the years since I got here. When you look back to the founding moment of SLA in 2006, what do you remember? What did it feel like you were launching?
George Bernstein: I don’t think we thought we were building a 20-year story.
We were responding to an immediate crisis. The School of Liberal Arts grew out of one of the most difficult moments in Tulane’s history. The sciences from Arts & Sciences had to merge into the Engineering School. Five doctoral programs had already been cut, and we were at risk of hemorrhaging faculty.
My role was really as a crisis manager, a problem solver in the crisis. I’d already been a dean, and there was a reasonable chance the faculty would trust me.
The priority wasn’t imagining what the School would become 20 years later. The priority was making sure there would be a School.
Brian: So before there was a long-term vision, there had to be stability.
George: Exactly.
Brian: Carole, by the time you arrived, the immediate crisis had passed. What did you inherit?
Carole: I inherited a school that was beginning to find its footing, but there was still tremendous emotion.
People were still very angry about the loss of Newcomb [College]. There were still strong feelings about the restructuring. You couldn’t simply tell people to move on. You had to help them imagine something worth moving toward.
Over time, we stopped talking about the merger and started talking about the School. That’s when I think it really began developing its own identity.
George: I think that’s exactly right. The early years were about stabilization. Once people believed the School was going to succeed, there was room to think about what made it distinctive.
Brian: George, what made it distinctive?
George: Tulane’s comparative advantage always, and I think still is, faculty contact. The availability of real faculty members to interact with students, both inside and outside the classroom. That’s always been our strength.
Carole: I want to disagree with you a little, George. Sorry.
There are a number of universities where faculty contact in undergraduate education is central to the experience. Northwestern. Washington University. Tulane.
Faculty engagement matters tremendously. But what I thought separated us was our place.
We intentionally developed what we called a mission–place approach. New Orleans wasn’t simply where we happened to be. The Gulf South mattered. Latin America mattered. Community engagement mattered.
Place shaped the questions we asked, the scholarship we encouraged, and the education our students received.
Brian: One of the things that’s struck me since coming to Tulane is that both of those ideas have continued to grow.
Maybe we’ve changed the vocabulary a little, but we’re still asking the same question: What can Tulane do exceptionally well because we’re Tulane?
That’s why we’ve invested in Native American & Indigenous Studies. Jewish Studies. Africana Studies. Haitian Creole. I don’t think they should necessarily be teaching Haitian Creole up at Northwestern, where I came from. There they taught Polish, and it makes sense because there’s a large Polish population in Chicago. Here, we have begun to teach Vietnamese for heritage speakers, which reflects New Orleans’ large Vietnamese population.
Those aren’t random additions. They’re expressions of who we are.
And I think that’s also the trajectory that leads to the Tulane Global Humanities Center. The New Orleans Center for the Gulf South, which of course you started, Carole, hasn’t disappeared. It’s expanded. The Global Humanities Center still has a deep commitment to the Gulf South, but now it’s asking those questions in conversation with the wider world.
To me, that’s not a departure from what you built. It’s a continuation of it.
Carole: That’s exactly right.
Brian: George, you’ve taught me that people used to call Tulane the “Harvard of the South.” I’ve come across that in histories I’ve read too.
George: Constantly. That phrase was everywhere. But eventually people stopped saying it.
Not because Tulane became less ambitious. Because Tulane became more confident in its own strengths.
There came a point where we didn’t need to define ourselves by comparison to another institution anymore. Tulane had become something distinctive.
Brian: I think that’s a really important lesson. If our ambition is to become another university, we’re asking the wrong question.
The better question is: What can Tulane become that only Tulane can become?
That leads to something I’ve been thinking about a lot.
What do we see as the future of liberal arts?
Personally, I think there are two conversations happening at once.
One is the traditional argument for liberal arts that goes all the way back to the founding of the country. It’s about educating citizens. It’s about communication, creative problem-solving, understanding cultures different from your own. You can trace that tradition all the way back to Cicero, who gave us the term “liberal arts.”
But what I keep coming back to is this: A liberal arts undergraduate education is the best preparation for the challenges and the careers of the future.
Not because we know what those careers are going to be. Because we don’t.
What we do know is that wherever the digital revolution takes us, and however the jobs of the future change, there will still be people making decisions. There will still be people leading organizations, interpreting information, solving problems, and working across cultures. Those are exactly the capacities a liberal arts education develops. The future may change the jobs people do, but it won’t eliminate the need for judgment.
Carole: I used to cite a study in which they measured students’ critical thinking when they entered college and then again when they graduated. The only students who showed statistically significant improvement were liberal arts students. I’ve quoted that study for years because it captured something we’ve always known.
George: We sometimes spend too much time defending ourselves instead of explaining ourselves. The point isn’t that students memorize more information. The point is that they learn how to think.
Knowledge changes. Judgment doesn’t.
Brian: Exactly. And then AI arrives. Everybody immediately asks whether liberal arts are suddenly obsolete.
The opposite happened. If you’re in the liberal arts, I honestly think you’re in a good position right now. Because no matter the impact of the technology, 10 or 20 years from now, there are still going to be humans around.
George: Otherwise, we’re all screwed.
(Laughter.)
Brian: Right. If there are still humans, there are still going to be people making decisions. Leading organizations. Trying to understand complicated problems. Helping communities make sense of change. Those are human responsibilities.
When AI became publicly available, people immediately started asking me whether we were going to create a major in prompt engineering. I’m not making this up. For a brief period of time, prompt engineering was considered one of the hottest jobs in technology.
Today? AI writes most prompts better than people do. That entire profession appeared and almost disappeared in the span of a couple of years.
If that’s what the future of work looks like, then the most valuable education isn’t preparing students for one particular job. It’s preparing them for 10 jobs. Or 15. Or careers that don’t even exist yet.
That’s why I have so much confidence that we must continue teaching philosophy. History. Anthropology. Languages. The things people sometimes dismiss as impractical are becoming more practical. Not less.
George: The more uncertain the future becomes, the more important those capacities become.
Carole: I agree. Universities have always had to prepare students for a world they couldn’t fully predict. That’s never been different. What’s different now is simply the speed of change.
Brian: Let me ask one final question. Twenty years from now, another dean will be sitting here celebrating 40 years of the School of Liberal Arts. What do you hope they say about the choices we’re making today?
George: I hope they say we never lost sight of what mattered most. Students. Faculty. The relationship between them. That’s always been Tulane’s greatest strength.
Carole: I hope they say we continued to evolve. Institutions don’t become stronger because every generation starts over. They become stronger because each generation builds on what came before.
Brian: That’s probably the biggest lesson I’ve taken from both of you. How one thing builds on another.
I frequently say to my team here about some of our boldest projects: “This isn’t really for us. This is for the next team.”
Long after we’re gone, somebody else is going to inherit the decisions we’re making today. The faculty we hire. The academic programs we create. The investments we make. The culture we build.
We’re trying to get this right. Because if we’ve done our jobs well, the next dean won’t have to start over.
They’ll inherit something even stronger than we did.