The Asia Society Hong Kong Center hosted David Horn, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at The Ohio State University, for a conversation about “Why the Liberal Arts Matter” on February 7. Ohio State alumna S. Alice Mong ’86, who serves on the board of The Ohio State University Alumni Association, moderated the conversation that was attended by alumni, educators and students from local schools.
After providing a brief history of the liberal arts, which emerged in medieval Europe, and of the American “land-grant” university, which took shape at the end of the 19th-century, Dean Horn argued for the ongoing importance of the liberal arts to the mission of public education. Horn reasoned that the breadth and depth of a liberal arts education have never mattered more: for imagining solutions to urgent challenges, for developing future workforces, and for partnering with communities and organizations around the world.
Horn and the guests discussed the relevance of liberal arts education and what role the American land-grant university can play in the global conversation.
“The world faces a wide variety of urgent challenges, and the research and creative projects that come out of our College of Arts and Sciences — whether from the arts and humanities, the social sciences or the natural and mathematical sciences — are crucial for asking productive questions and finding workable solutions,” Horn said. “We prepare lifelong learners who are uniquely ready to navigate a rapidly changing economy and to move across barriers of language and culture. And because we are a land-grant university, we have an obligation to engage with local and global partners to intervene in the world in consequential ways.”
Since many members of the Ohio State University Alumni Club of Hong Kong attended the lecture, the evening also served as a Buckeye reunion.
