Commissioned by the chancellors of Vanderbilt University and Washington University in St. Louis and written by an independent committee of scholars, this report assesses the state of scholarship in the humanities and humanistic social sciences, taking up the widespread complaint that political aims have displaced the traditional pursuit of understanding in these fields. The committee rejects that complaint in its starkest form, finding serious and rigorous work in every discipline it examined, but it paints a mixed picture in which political criteria have, to varying degrees, supplanted scholarly ones and eroded ideals of objectivity — modestly in a field like philosophy, severely in one like anthropology. Tracing this politicization to three distinct sources, the report stresses that its findings remain provisional and urges administrators to rely on broad-minded disciplinary experts rather than intervene. It further cautions against politicizing pressures from both the left and the right, concluding that academic work should be judged only by its capacity to advance understanding through rigorous scholarly standards.