Chancellor Biddy Martin told a crowd at the University of Wisconsin Wednesday the humanities have suffered at the university level because of an inability to connect with the general public.

“Concerted systematic and public attacks on the humanities have taken their toll; that’s part of the story,” Martin said. “I don’t think that’s the whole story. I think the inability of the public to understand what we do and our failure to essentially to translate it for a larger public are a bigger part of a story.”

Martin addressed a variety of issues between the humanities and the general population, including the notion the humanities are not useful and their presence on campuses across the country is marginal.

Martin stressed the need to connect with this public to both show the merits of the humanities and allow them to earn the support they need to survive.

“(We need to) stop casting ourselves as marginal, stop casting ourselves as an enclave and a lone voice in the wilderness,” Martin said. “When people see you take pleasure in your work, they’re stimulated and sometimes inspired. That’s the other reason to go positive and just do what we do without apology.”

Gilles Bousquet, dean of international studies, attended the lecture and said Martin’s background in the humanities puts her in a position to “take the humanities to a new level.”

He said the idea of being open but unapologetic about work in the humanities is the best way to engage both humanities scholars and people outside of the university.

“Don’t necessarily be concerned with translating, but do what you do … the best you can, and be excited. Make sure you can talk on different levels. It’s not about simplification — it’s more about passionately communicating with other people and learning from them too,” Bousquet said.

Former chancellor John Wiley said of the “$800 million or so” the university receives each year for research from governments, donors and corporations, very little goes into the humanities.

“They aren’t supported by the public nearly as much as they should be, and that has been a pretty constant problem, and that is demoralizing,” Wiley said.

Wiley noted the university’s academic focus is divided into four areas: arts and humanities, social sciences, physical sciences and biological sciences.

Of the four, he said it is impossible to objectively declare one more important than the others, as they are all major areas of human knowledge and social concern.

He described the humanities as a discipline important in all aspects of education though, saying even engineering students are required to take humanities courses.

“It’s not just what you know in a technical sense, it’s your ability to work with other people,” Wiley said. “The humanities are extremely important and are going to be even more so in the future. Some of the technologies — we’re going to have to think very hard on how to use them. Ethics and philosophy are humanistic departments that are going to inform how we use science.”