I’m not a huge fan of “relevance” in the educational curriculum; there’s  a lot of essential liberal learning (to say nothing of STEM learning) that is not directly pertinent to unfolding events. But with the world on fire, unfolding developments (in the Middle East, Ukraine, and elsewhere) are relevant to the liberal arts through the nexus of citizenship. That’s the nexus where the news media meet higher education; where it’s the media’s business to determine and convey relevance and significance. Everything we learn is, in one way or another, for (political, cultural, or economic) citizenship.