I WONDER WHY THAT IS.

"Humanities Chairs ‘Pessimistic’ About Their Departments’ Future."  We've been on that beat for a long time.

Of course, the people whose salaries depend on not paying attention to what Cold Spring Shops does will deflect, deny, or cry.

Humanities chairs—anxious about increasing political interference, declining enrollments and students’ skepticism toward the value of humanities degrees—are largely pessimistic about the future of their departments, according to a new report from the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Chairs told researchers that they are perceived as “a necessary evil” or “troublemakers” by institutional leaders. One chair described their department as “persecuted.” Another asked: “Where’s the respect for my expertise?”

Well, yes, four decades of denying coherent beliefs and turning out the next generation of baristas will have that effect.  As far as respect for expertise, well, there might be people who can tell you all the ways in which 1940 Schlitz beer bottles are different from the ones on the beer truck in 1955, and there are organizations for the collectors of bottles and other breweriana, and undoubtedly those people enjoy great respect among their fellow collectors, but they don't go awarding each other tenure, grants, fellowships, and endowed chairs.

I doubt any collector of beer bottles feels sorry for himself that the wider world little notes his efforts.  A half century of deconstructing the best that has been known and written in favor of junk-think simply squanders whatever respect the literary types once had.

Nor does it do the enterprise much good to complain about being asked to do a job that might be an opportunity to expose students to the best that has been known and written rather than focus only on the recondite scholarship that keeps the grant money flowing.

Those interviewed disliked a typical funding model that rewards departments for enrolling higher numbers of majors rather than more students. Humanities classes are often part of core curriculum requirements—which chairs see as “protecting” their departments—that require humanities faculty to teach more students without necessarily receiving equivalent financial support. Some chairs also resented feeling “instrumentalized,” as one interviewee put it.

“We’re perceived as instrumentalized. We just teach you how to write a sentence—that isn’t what we went to grad school for,” they said.

Convincing students to major in the humanities is a “significant hurdle” for chairs, the report states, in part because many parents—and therefore students—perceive that doing so will severely limit potential employment opportunities.

My attitude toward the humanities disciplines might have been less jaundiced if I had encountered more students in the senior capstone class who knew how to write a sentence.

Reap what you sow.