What's the importance of learning liberal arts?

(upbeat music) - [DJ Patil] Another thing that I think is critically important is what my dad is. He's a computer scientist, electrical engineer. That's incrediably hard math. But one thing he instilled in me very aggressively was the importance of liberal arts. And really always push me to think about how do you make sure that you have a great liberal arts training. And how that benefits you if you're a scientist.

And so when I finally did go from a community college to my four year institution at University of California in San Diego. I had the opportunity to take an incrediable amount of theater classes. And got my, what was in their system is basically equivalent of a minor in theater and psychology as well. And I'm grateful, I'm so grateful for those classes. Not just because of how fun they were but they introduced me to a world that and people that just opened my eyes in a different way.

Learning about Chicano Theater and through that the mechanisms and the hardships that were placed on migrant workers. And why Ceaser Chavez had to fight so hard for rights for people. Also the ability to story tell and come up with ways to communicate across very, diverse populations. That was incrediably important. Visual acuity, how to present things. You know people forget often times one of the founders of Linkedin is Allen Blue.

Allen while incrediable at coding and doing all these other things, specialty is theater. And so there's an important thing that we often try to highlight of like technology and science. But technology and science without that humanity, without that soul it just doesn't, just doesn't add the value and push us in the way we need to go. And we're seeing that especially right now with these ethical conversations around how technology gets used.

Whether it's social media or how genetic editing happens. All of that's a question that may not be sorted out by technology. But is really one that is a question of humanity. And that is focused on (upbeat music) and only can be answered through the deeper questions that humanities provides.