Critical humanities in the Arab region: rethinking knowledge production, interdisciplinarity, and institutional reform

Abstract

This Perspective examines the position of the humanities in Arab higher education and argues that the emergence of critical humanities in the region should be understood as an epistemic and institutional response to the conditions that shape knowledge production within universities. Rather than treating critical humanities as a thematic expansion of existing disciplines, the paper analyzes them as a framework for rethinking how higher education institutions organize inquiry, evaluate scholarship, and connect research to public life. It identifies three interrelated constraints affecting the humanities in Arab universities: structural marginalization within academic systems, linguistic tensions shaping scholarly communication, and the limited institutional support for interdisciplinary and socially engaged research. The article further discusses the Ibn Khaldon Center at Qatar University as an example of how interdisciplinarity and interactive localization can be translated into institutional practice through research design, curricular thinking, and evaluative tools. The paper argues that the renewal of the humanities in Arab higher education depends on integrating methodological innovation, linguistic agency, and institutional reform within a coherent academic strategy.