Several weeks ago I had the privilege of attending the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine event on “Intersecting Identities and Transdisciplinary Research at Historically Black Colleges and Universities.” It was a fascinating event that showed how resource scarcity at HBCUs and their strong commitment to a common mission has been fertile ground for trans- and interdisciplinary partnerships across STEM, the arts, and the humanities. It also argued that there was a consonance in the promotion of interdisciplinarity across academic fields and attempts to promote demographic diversity in student and faculty populations (Branches from the Same Tree, 15-16). Both rely on creating a flexible academy able to embrace multiple points of view and integrate them into a coherent whole. In an era where the university is in flux – shifting ever more towards the STEM fields and increasingly responsive to employer influence on curriculum – as a humanist it was heartening to hear STEM faculty and university administrators speak to the value of humanistic learning in creating well-rounded thinkers and informed citizens.

Despite the generally positive tone of the discussion, it was hard to look at the examples given of transdisciplinary cooperation and wonder if the arts and humanities were really equal partners in this endeavor or simply a way to make scientific and/or mathematical concepts more palatable to students. A representative from one university spoke about an entrepreneurship class that reach across disciplinary lines to design, create, package, and market a product. The purpose of the project was to show how the strengths of different team members were necessary to shepherd a project from an idea to the hands of an interested consumer. Unfortunately, the project was framed in a way that suggested that engineers and scientists would be the principal product developers and creators and the humanists would be there for marketing. This was echoed in a community college class at another university where music theory and history were used to teach the physics of sound. Again, the concepts were scientific and the communication humanistic.

Marketing and communications are viable and important career pathways for humanists (in fact, that’s the field I have gone into having earned my doctorate in history). Trans- and interdisciplinary projects that focus solely on the communicative function of the humanities badly misunderstand the value of those fields, however. The ways that fields like English and philosophy encourage critical engagement are valuable for challenging assumptions and pushing back against group think. History teaches research skills that are vital in an information economy where it is often difficult to distinguish fact from fiction. Even more importantly, those fields provide useful information and learning experiences. History helps us understand ourselves and one another. Tangling with a complex ethical dilemma prepares us to confront moral challenges at work and at home. Reading a novel or examining a piece of art gives us a vocabulary to understand and express aesthetic preferences and ideas.

One possible area of cooperation explored at the National Academies event and elsewhere is the integration of ethics into STEM. A panelist teaching physics at a community college argued that every STEM student should be required to take an ethics course before beginning a STEM major. She argued this would ensure that ethical concerns were foregrounded in scientific study instead of tacked on at the end of a major or as an elective course. This suggestion echoes Cathy O’Neil’s excellent book Weapons of Math Destruction which urged the integration of ethical matrices in corporate big data projects in order to avoid the perpetuation of race, gender, and social biases in the construction of algorithms.

These uneven partnerships have a long history. From physicists deriding social scientists for being insufficiently scientific to political scientists and economists labeling area specialists as mere fact-gatherers, the history of American higher education is ridden with spoiled and fraught interdisciplinary partnerships (Solovey, 2013 for the former and my forthcoming book for the latter). Most of these partnerships failed in either the short or medium term. Their failures are as diverse as the slights that occasioned the split: insufficient funding causing competition between fields or ways of knowing, too much funding disincentivizing collaboration, interpersonal rivalry, the retirement or death of a pioneering advocate, and the list goes on.

Two features of these failures are fairly constant, however: inequality and a lack of empathy. For contemporary interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary partnerships between STEM and other fields to succeed all participants need to be treated as equal partners even if STEM funding outpaces the arts and humanities. More importantly, all parties must identify with the triumphs and challenges of their compatriots in other fields. Trust is required for honest intellectual exchange and engagement. These relationships take time to build, but must be built on a foundation of rough equality and respect. Partners must share common goals and a vision for their shared enterprise. Mutual using – for accessibility or financial reasons – is not partnership and interdisciplinary projects rooted in this vision are doomed to duplicate the failures of the past.