The Humanities Institute at Stony Brook is pleased to launch the Critical University Studies Forum, a series that invites Stony Brook faculty, students, and administrators to come together to reflect on the history and future of the public research university. This inaugural year illuminates the vital and revitalizing role played by the Humanities in higher education in the twenty-first century, as well as the challenges of safeguarding the Humanities from the corporate logics of neoliberalism. Events are aimed at helping our knowledge communities to recognize and counter the dismal forces that disparage and diminish the work universities do to cultivate understanding, and which undermine the reflective and liberatory thinking that have animated the Humanities since their inception. Upcoming events include:

• October 7, 2026 - Reflections on the Vanderbilt Report: a roundtable discussion of the Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and the Humanistic Social Science, commissioned by Vanderbilt University and Washington University-St. Louis.  12:30-1:50pm Campus Lifetime in 1008 Humanities.
• Spring 2027, date TBD - The Politics of Peer Review: a lecture with respondents, addressing political influence on peer review, including the recent efforts by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to restructure grant approval.