E106: CMU Coup? (w/ Sheila Liming & Catherine Evans)

On today’s show, Alex and Calvin sit down with the co-authors of a viral op-ed in The Chronicle of Higher Education regarding the controversial restructuring of the English Department at Carnegie Mellon University: Dr. Sheila Liming (Associate Professor of Writing & Publishing, Champlain College) and Catherine Evans (doctoral candidate in Literary and Cultural Studies, Carnegie Mellon University). This article is particularly significant for Calvin and Alex, who also earned their PhDs in Rhetoric from the CMU English Department and had many cherished mentors and colleagues in the Literary and Cultural Studies (LCS) program. In the article, entitled "A Coup at Carnegie Mellon?," Sheila and Catherine examine the administrative pivot at CMU from LCS to a new degree in Computational Cultural Studies (CCS). Specifically, the authors analyze and interrogate the institutional rhetoric of innovation - a buzzword that puts a positive spin on undemocratic changes, such as dissolving or downsizing university programs, staff, and/or faculty.

In our conversation, we talk with Catherine and Sheila about how values like "interdisciplinarity" and "innovation" are paradoxically being used to hollow out the humanities at Carnegie Mellon as they privilege a more narrow set of research priorities. They take us through the major findings in their article regarding the opaque administrative process that "froze out" faculty and student input, effectively replacing a program centered on the critique of power with one focused primarily on training with computational tools. We also discuss the broader implications of the "AI hype" cycle in higher education, the validity of arguments regarding job market prospects for humanities graduates, and the vital importance of studying literature and culture for their own sake - rather than as case studies for purportedly "neutral" data-driven methodologies.

Sheila and Catherine’s co-authored article: Liming, S., & Evans, C. A. (2025). A Coup at Carnegie Mellon? The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Works & Concepts Referenced in this Episode: 

England, J. & Purcell, R. (2020). Higher Ed’s Toothless Response to the Killing of George Floyd. The Chronicle of Higher Education. 

Gitelman, L. (2008). Always already new: Media, history, and the data of culture. MIT Press.

Kirschenbaum, M. (2025). The U.S. of A.I. (Public lecture, Princeton University). 

Williams, J. J. (2016). Innovation for What? Dissent.

An accessible transcript of this episode can be found here (via Descript)