Liberal Arts: An Essential Line of Defense for Critical Thinking in the AI Era

As AI, misinformation, and polarization reshape both the economy and the academy, the liberal arts face a paradox: never more needed, yet increasingly doubted. Building Defenses for Critical Thinking challenges higher-education leaders to reassert the strategic and societal ROI of the liberal arts—not as a nostalgic ideal, but as a competitive differentiator for students entering the AI-enabled workforce of the future, while also exploring the changes that need to be made to the liberal arts to keep them relevant in an emerging, integrated workforce environment.