The Spotlight
How Should We Live Our Lives?
The call of the Arts and Humanities
By Professor Dawn Freshwater, Vice-Chancellor, Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland
“Across much of the West, the arts, humanities and social sciences (AHSS) are being cut back."
"The lesson is clear: this is not just a budget line to be trimmed."
The question of how we should live our lives is not simply a navel-gazing question about the nature of being and existence. Many of us would argue that it is a question now in sharp relief, given the overlapping crises facing humanity. It is also a question of what humanity is, how it has changed and how we will know ourselves in the future. It is, essentially, as much about what knowledge is and how we understand it, as about who will control it. One might say this fundamental question has never been more urgent.
The ongoing undermining of arts, humanities and social sciences education, along with the loss and defence of associated research funding, has itself become the subject of much recent writing. Yet, the issue reaches beyond money. This significant area of scholarship reflects what societies value and what they are prepared to let wither.
That mirror reveals a worrying global divide. Across much of the West, the arts, humanities and social sciences (AHSS) are being cut back, sidelined or forced into narrow, utilitarian roles. In Asia, by contrast, governments are treating these disciplines as strategic assets. They are investing in them to build identity, cohesion and global influence. If universities, policymakers and decision-makers in Western democracies do not act, they risk not only ceding cultural and intellectual leadership for a generation, but also losing the chance to connect new technologies such as AI with real human experience.
The evidence of such retrenchment is stark. Governments are choosing to “deprioritise” AHSS research by reducing or cancelling research funding. In New Zealand, the humanities and social sciences are no longer eligible for Marsden Fund grants, the country's flagship “blue skies” funder.
New Zealand’s Beehive Executive Wing, adjacent to Parliament Buildings. Cuts to arts, social sciences and humanities research pose threats to democracy and law..
Earlier this year in the United States, the National Endowment for the Humanities was gutted, with more than a thousand grants and research projects disrupted. Some funding has since been restored for next year.
In the United Kingdom, the Arts and Humanities Research Council will, from 2026, fund only a handful of projects per institution, effectively cutting off the pipeline for early-career researchers. Significant cuts to research budgets in the Netherlands and Switzerland are also impacting AHSS research.
These are not isolated missteps. They reflect a worldview in which valued knowledge is reduced to what can be patented, commercialised or measured in productivity terms. In this frame, science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEMM) research equals economic competitiveness, while AHSS is dismissed as optional or a nice-to-have at best and ornamental at worst. The effect is corrosive; entire disciplines have become precarious, research autonomy is being undermined and scholars working on culture, ethics, governance or Indigenous knowledge are being left stranded.
The very fields that equip societies to question power, debate meaning and manage pluralism are the ones being hollowed out.
At the University of Auckland’s Centre for Arts and Social Transformation, researchers consider the application of arts to major social issues.
Meanwhile, Asia is taking a more balanced approach. China has dramatically expanded investment in history, philosophy, cultural studies and social sciences, complementing its technological strength. Singapore and South Korea are integrating the humanities with AI and biotechnology research, ensuring that ethical and cultural frameworks evolve alongside technological advances.
India is scaling up its support for the social sciences to strengthen its democracy and enhance its global role. Across the region, AHSS is not seen as an indulgence but as strategic infrastructure that is essential to nation-building, soft power and global influence.
In the West, AHSS risks being reduced to a thin margin of activity, carried on by underfunded scholars at the edges of STEMM-dominated systems. In Asia, AHSS is being deliberately nurtured as part of a holistic research ecosystem. The capacity to tell stories, frame history, interpret culture and interrogate technology will increasingly lie with those societies that invested in these fields, not with those that abandoned them.
The lesson is clear: this is not just a budget line to be trimmed. It is a choice about whether to sustain the disciplines that allow societies and humans to understand themselves and to shape their futures. If Western decisionmakers continue down the path of retrenchment, they will leave their countries with the technical capacity to build technologies, but without the cultural and ethical capability to guide their use. Democracies will weaken their own foundations of social cohesion by neglecting the very research traditions that support civic trust, cultural identity and critical debate.
The call to action is urgent: How should we live our lives?
University leaders must warn decisionmakers that cuts to AHSS research are not fiscal prudence but an act of cultural disarmament. The impacts are rapidly arriving at their front doors: polarisation, threats to democracy and law and loss of identity. We, in our institutions, must consider more deeply what others need from us. Without understanding ourselves and protecting the fundamentals of our communities, what is the value of technological gains?
The question is not whether society can afford to fund AHSS. It is whether society can afford not to. Some parts of the globe, including Asia, have already decided they cannot. The West must wake up before the loss becomes irreversible.