"The Role of a Humanist Is to Preserve Knowledge, Safeguard Learning From the Market and the Tides of Popular Interest, and Ward Off Coarse Appeals to Economic Utility"

"Depending on whom I asked, the move to scale back humanities doctoral programs is either a prudent acknowledgment of the cratered job market for tenure-track professorships and a wise attempt to protect the university's humanities division from looming financial and political risks, or it is a cynical effort, under cover of the Trump administration's assaults, to transfer resources away from 'impractical,' unprofitable, and largely jobless fields (such as, say, comparative literature) and toward areas that the university's senior leadership seems to care about (such as, say, STEM and 'innovation'). One faculty member I spoke with mentioned a consulting firm that was brought on to help Chicago as it considers changes to its humanities division, including possibly consolidating the departments from 15 down to eight. Many professors worried that the move to impose uneven changes—reducing admissions in some while halting them in others—may be an attempt to create circumstances that will ultimately make it easier to dissolve the paused programs. 'Let no good crisis go unleveraged,' Holly Shissler, an associate professor in the Middle Eastern Studies department, said with a dark laugh. 'You engineer a situation in which there are no students, and then you turn around and say, "Why are we supporting all these departments and faculty when they have no students?"'"

Tyler Austin Harper at The Atlantic asks, "If the University of Chicago Won't Defend the Humanities, Who Will?"