If there is one thing about which virtually all humanities professors, university administrators, and state legislators seem to agree these days, it's that the humanities are in a state of crisis, their enrollments in precipitous decline and their prestige at an ebb. Students, their parents, and policymakers still want things from our colleges; it's just that what they want, according to the current consensus, are economists, engineers, life scientists, and psychologists—not literary critics or visual artists. That, however, is where the agreement ends. When it comes to figuring out why the humanities are in crisis—and what is to be done about it—there seems to be no agreement at all. To some commentators, the humanities have gotten too impractical; our students want something more than obscurantist theories preoccupied with relativizing and "problematizing" everything. To others, however, the humanities are most in danger precisely when they get too applied; instead, they implore students to spend more time in disinterested contemplation. Which is it? Or is it possible that both critiques, and their attendant solutions, are missing the plot?
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