
        &lt;p&gt;Despite national trends emphasizing technical career-specific education, the humanities remain an essential element of schooling, Harvard University anthropology professor Arthur Kleinman said in a lecture Thursday afternoon in the Haldeman Center. Speaking to an audience of approximately 30 people that mostly included medical students and professors, Kleinman argued that while cynicism has become a natural reflex for people, studying the humanities can help brighten a person&rsquo;s outlook.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&ldquo;The humanities and the interpreted social sciences and the arts should be nurturing lives that resist and transcend cynicism,&rdquo; Kleinman said. &ldquo;The university is unique among institutions in its potential to foster, in a concerted way, orientations to living that overcome cynicism.&rdquo;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We are surrounded by cynicism, Kleinman said, as evidenced by our acceptance of the steroid culture in professional sports and our acquiescence with the way sexuality is used in advertising.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Through studying the humanities, individuals can cultivate idealism and develop a critical lens to overcome negativity and improve the world, according to Kleinman.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&ldquo;Most of us are not going to change the world, and yet there are things that we can do that are still important,&rdquo; he said.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Such &ldquo;anti-heroic actions&rdquo; demonstrate the need for change and show new, legitimate ways of living, Kleinman said.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Kleinman described College President Jim Yong Kim as an &ldquo;anti-hero.&rdquo; Kim&rsquo;s strides to improve third-world countries through disease prevention and treatment represented a departure from the World Health Organization&rsquo;s usual way of tackling health problems, but left a positive impact, according to Kleinman.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&ldquo;They have undertaken great actions that have changed the world,&rdquo; Kleinman said of Kim and his Partners in Health co-founder, Paul Farmer.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Kim was originally slated to introduce Kleinman, a personal acquaintance, but was called away to an event in Washington, D.C., at the last minute, according to the stand-in moderator of the event.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Other &ldquo;anti-heroes&rdquo; Kleinman cited included Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and James Grant, former executive director of UNICEF.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Kleinman also discussed the importance of caregiving as opposed to emotionally-lacking medical treatment.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&ldquo;When individuals participate in caregiving, there is a possibility of increasing our presence as an emotional, moral and aesthetic way of being in the world,&rdquo; Kleinman said. &ldquo;We come forward morally.&rdquo;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Kleinman questioned what will happen to American education if more schools transition to what he called the &ldquo;[Massachusetts Institute of Technology] model,&rdquo; in which the majority of focus is placed on applied science, and any focus on other fields is relatively modest.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&ldquo;What is the future of humanities and social sciences if we end up with most of our universities being MITs?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;MIT is a great university, but it&rsquo;s a certain kind of university that [Dartmouth is] not and [Harvard is] not.&rdquo;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Kleinman said the prevalence of technology raises a multitude of ethical questions that must be answered through a humanity-focused lens.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Sukie Punjasthitkul, who attended the lecture to research for his job at the game design center known as Tiltfactor Laboratory, said he agred with Kleinman&rsquo;s thesis that the humanities and arts needs more funding.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&ldquo;I think [the lecture was] very pertinent considering everything&rsquo;s so focused on economics right now,&rdquo; Punjasthitkul said.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Matt Sattler &rsquo;14 said he attended the lecture on the recommendation of his anthropology professor.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&ldquo;As college students, we&rsquo;re constantly dealing with these questions of how do we better ourselves in society, and we do see this cynicism present on campus,&rdquo; Sattler said. &ldquo;We go to classes during the day, then we go to frats, and we see all these things that we wish we could change but don&rsquo;t know how. This is the kind of the thing that I&rsquo;ll take home and say, &lsquo;We should take what we have and make much more out of it.&rsquo;&rdquo;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The lecture, &ldquo;Against Cynicism: How the Humanities and the Cultivation of Our Moral Selves Sustain the Idealism of Students and Faculty,&rdquo; was sponsored by the Leslie Center for the Humanities and the Ethics Institute.&lt;/p&gt;

      