"The Institute for the Humanities brings outstanding depth and dimension to the University of Michigan’s recognized interdisciplinary excellence. It is a crucial presence in charting a future for the humanities in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts. I had the honor to be a fellow at the Institute early on in its history, and found the conversations energizing, the debates challenging, and the time and space to pursue my own research a godsend. During the upcoming Capital Campaign we will focus attention on inspiring a life of art and culture and the humanities are the indispensable components of such a life. The Institute will be central to our plans."

Since our beginnings, nearly two decades ago, our planning horizons have greatly expanded. Our fellowships and programs draw participants and spectators from nearby, from the region, the nation and from overseas. We have enjoyed an external review in which the evaluators both praised us and cautioned us – realize what we do well, seek to expand appropriately, remember that we can never be all things to all people.

Our goals include

• new kinds of fellowships: ways to bring humanists and artists, critics and performers, together.
• new conversations worldwide, using all the technology, funding resources, time that we can invest in promoting a necessarily global orientation.
• ways to involve all who seek to improve and invent new designs for “a cultured life,” and in so doing, feature the humanities and arts as core components. Our intention remains firmly to bring such resources only when they reach beneath surfaces, place activities in a context, spark new partnerships with other agencies to bring an added value to the University and its broadest communities.

Programs we will promote over the next five years:

• Arts commissions – cooperative ventures with University agencies such as the School of Art + Design, the University Musical Society, the UM Museum of Art, among many others, to promote productions, installations, performance pieces, works of art and music and dance. As fund-seeking organizations vie for shrinking funding nationwide, we at Michigan have extraordinary talent – and seek funding to aid in promoting – ventures that might otherwise be hard-pressed to surface.
• Careers in the Making – a fellowship program to bring artists and performers into the residential community each year
• Crossing the Diag: Humanities in Dialogue – a plan to engage parts of the University the humanities and arts only occasionally or rarely seek out. Using a central topic that stretches humanities/arts notions, we will bring a humanities arts/lens to examining, for instance, issues of infectious disease, or the history and scope of opera in the Americas.
• Seminars in the Cities – a program to offer events that showcase the best of Michigan faculty and students in cities across the US in small, seminar-like gatherings.

"Medicine and Science are important to our physical well being, but the Humanities examine the real meaniing in our lives. The Institute for the Humanities is a Petri dish: very smart people from widely differing disciplines. It creates a setting for original and powerful new ideas, ideas that can change the way we think about our lives."

"As I considered ways of providing support to the University of Michigan, I realized that the Institute for the Humanities incorporates the qualities that I personally find most important. The Humanities are not well supported, yet the study of the Humanities is what will significantly affect the quality of intellectual life for future generations. The Institute pursues learning for its own sake, rather than trying to patent a new drug, or discover a different atom. Thus the Institute exemplifies the real meaning of a liberal education."