Fareed Zakaria’s defense of the liberal arts responds to specific attacks on liberal arts curricula and degrees in the 2010s that came from policy makers across the political spectrum. Zakaria contends that a liberal education remains valuable for all people, despite calls for increased focus on technical and vocational fields. He suggests that the latter, moreover, can also benefit from a grounding in the liberal arts. The liberal arts are not outdated and useless, as some critics suggest. According to Zakaria, they are essential for an equitable society, democracy’s survival, and innovation.

Zakaria’s book was published during the second Obama administration. One of this administration’s top educational priorities was strengthening STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education through teacher training, the creation of schools centered on STEM learning, and reforming pedagogy to center technology and engineering. These changes at the elementary and secondary levels would impact higher education in the long term. Students turned away from the humanities, arts, and social sciences in favor of STEM fields that they believed could guarantee a career. Zakaria concurs that American knowledge of the sciences needs improvement, but not at the expense of a liberal education.