No resolution is an island

Several years ago, during yet another state budget crunch, there was a proposal to trim academic departments in some barbaric way at my college. My colleagues raised a hue and cry, fuss and muss, and gloomily predicted the downfall of civilization should the humanities be cut, STEM, or STEAM, or STREAM be damned. At the time I remembered something Kurt Vonnegut wrote about someone questioning why people take a moral stand. Vonnegut wrote that person said we might as well write strongly worded letters to the editor condemning icebergs for all the good our concerns do in changing the minds of movers, shakers and general powers-that-be.

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