…is that 'the crisis in the humanities' mostly emerges from factors scholars in the humanities can't control.
Chairing the board of the Philosophy Faculty won't, in fact, let you intervene in
- the way the government requires students to fund their studies,
- the erosion of the welfare state,
- patterns of domestic entertainment, or
- how the economy looks.
In my experience people acting within the humanities to fight 'the crisis' either
- act in good faith but suffer from the delusion of agency; or
- act in bad faith, e.g. Leicester firing all its medieval English experts and abandoning the first two thirds of English literature because this is somehow decolonisation
This is not to say that one should not do things in or to the humanities, that there are not positive gains to be made by changing e.g.
- curriculums;
- methodologies;
- staffing and staffing patterns; or
- the shape of the doctorate.
But I suspect one could make many sweeping and valuable changes in those areas and yet still not move the dial on the long withdrawing roar.
(@thaliarchus is obviously not my professional Twitter account. That's my unprofessional Twitter account.)