Submitted by Sarah Pratt on Wed, 06/05/2026 - 16:01
Barak Kushner isn’t one to mince words. After 24 years as a professor of East Asian history, he brings valuable experiences and observations to a conversation about education. We sat down with Kushner from the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (AMES) for a frank discussion about the importance of languages and history, and why we need the humanities.
Sarah Pratt: How do you see the skills arts and humanities teach translating into what students take into the world after graduation?
Barak Kushner: As someone who does non-Western history, the initial critical hump is language. If you don't have language skills, then the conversation is over. And I think in this age of AI, apps that translate what you’re saying are okay when travelling, but it’s not helpful for what I do. It doesn’t provide the depth of conversation; it puts up another barrier.
When it comes to history, speaking the same language is important because otherwise you have no platform from which to speak or persuade others that your interpretation of the past is valid or has value to listen to. I worked with a Chinese crew on a recent documentary, and we had interesting cultural and historical discussions about the script. I was able to communicate with them and say things like, “You can’t say this anymore” or “This isn’t accurate.”
SP: And having direct conversations, without having to go through an interpreter, is more personal and immediate.
BK: It is – you can add your voice to a conversation in a very direct way. It also shows people an appreciation for their language and you are taken slightly more seriously.
SP: You’ve done 6 documentaries — 5 TV episodes in China and one about food history in Japan — how was that experience, something quite different from being in the classroom or a research setting?
BK: So that's one thing I think about more often, the digital presentation of material. It’s exceedingly important. Most people don’t go and buy big, thick books and read them over a yearly basis. They see a movie and watch TV, so it's learning about how people who make TV, who have a huge influence, come to their understanding of the subject matter. Turns out, they hire a lot of us historians.
I remember being extremely disappointed with the first set of videos I worked on because I thought, "Good god, this is so superficial." When you look at the script for a 45-minute show, it's maybe 20 pages and some of it is narrative description. But I realised the goal is different from writing a book – you can't get much data or very in-depth, but it's an opening for people and it requires a very different set of skills. This was a Chinese TV documentary series that ended up winning an international award, so that was good and surprised me.
SP: That’s interesting, the chain of historian to content maker.
BK: And history is so important. I think people forget how intimately tied it is to a sense of self within a nation and then the sense of the nation within the larger region. We're all suffering the effects of how people conceive of their own history, and vice versa. And history is the great stumbling block to better international relations, and better bilateral and regional relations.
I mean, does your average British citizen care what I do? Probably not. But again, we have a role outside of just, I think, our small enclave of Cambridge, and I think that's one of the important reasons to have historians who investigate non-European history and to promote that and keep funding that, because funding is the biggest problem.
SP: Why do you think arts and humanities are important?
BK: I think the challenge with the value of humanities is that it can be unquantifiable.
I think critical thinking, writing, reading, being able to process information, create knowledge out of that information – all important. You're creating knowledge. And creating knowledge is hard because it hasn’t been done before, and you have to figure out if you’re right or wrong and have hypotheses.
You need ideas, but then you need evidence, and then you have to package it in a way that people want to read it or consume it in a film or something. And I don't think we're very good at explaining what the creation of knowledge is, but that should be what a university is about, the creation of knowledge. And the humanities include how do you package that knowledge and in what form.
If we think about humanities as a creation of cultural and social knowledge that supports society to continue to stabilise, grow, self-reflect, and become a more inclusive, fun, and interesting place to live, that's part of the value of humanities. But it's hard to put an actual currency value on that.
SP: A question I think is interesting to ask people is, if you were to imagine a world without arts and humanities, what does it look like?
BK: It would just be drab, unpleasant, dark and dreary. It's raining every day, kind of world. Imagination dwindles. We would be missing important skills and vital research. We wouldn't have music, theatre, movies, the written word, art, philosophy, history…the list goes on. Humanities are the avenue of imagination, and I wouldn’t want to live in a world without them.
Explore some of Professor Kushner's work:
New online: See the 2-part Chinese documentary on postwar war crimes trials and justice he narrated and hosted.
Episode 1:《正义的审判》(上) https://m.jstv.com/live/2025/9/2/1412468799868006400.html
Episode 2:《正义的审判》(下) https://m.jstv.com/video/2025/9/2/1412542685827547136.html?curchannel=热点
Now online: See the documentary he hosted and narrated on the history and branding of ramen in English! In Deep with Ramen: Outside in Lost in Academia, on NHK world for free. (https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/shows/4047001/).
Recently published: Barak Kushner, The Geography of Injustice: East Asia's Battle between Memory and History, (Cornell University Press, 2024).
**Now also available in a Taiwan Chinese translation:『不正義的地理學: 二戰後東亞的記憶戰爭與歷史裂痕』(張毅瑄譯), 貓頭鷹出版, 2025.