It is difficult to remember a time when scholars and teachers in language, literature, and cultural studies fields did not find themselves on the front lines of a cultural and political battlefield. Our polarized political landscape, legislative attacks on academic freedom, and a growing climate of hostility on many campuses, to say nothing of persistent patterns of austerity and adjunctification, have disempowered faculty members and made it more challenging than ever to encourage students to engage in open, meaningful discourse (see, e.g., MLA Committee on Academic Freedom). As humanists, we are poised not only to impart expert knowledge in our fields but also to navigate—and help students navigate—the complex sociopolitical environments that shape our classrooms and institutions.
As MLA members, we have a number of organizational avenues and outlets for collectively addressing these challenges, including actions by the Executive Council, motions and resolutions, and publications such as this. This special issue of Profession stemmed from Emergency Motion 2024-1, which focused on defending academic freedom and asked the Executive Council to urge campus administrators to defend students’ and faculty members’ right to protest in response to the unconscionable war in Gaza. The open debate of Emergency Motion 2024-1—at the Delegate Assembly meeting during the MLA convention in January 2024—reflected democratic governance at its best. The motion was amended on the floor in a collegial process and secured the support of a vast majority of the delegates present. We will not soon forget, and continue to draw inspiration from, the powerful image of Delegate Assembly members having to raise their hands to vote following a technology malfunction.
As the Executive Council noted in our March 2024 letter to members about the motion, campus intimidation is, unfortunately, not new (“Letter”). And the MLA has a long history of gathering and sharing resources to support faculty members and their right to protest and to manage their syllabi and classrooms without interference. A serious goal of this Profession special issue is to provide even more opportunities for members to share how they are pushing back against the current climate of hostility—a climate that has arguably only grown worse in the year since the 2024 convention. At the same time, we want the issue to tap into and showcase our unique skills and strengths as humanists specializing in different linguistic, literary, and cultural traditions and working across a range of institutional spaces and regions.
The five essays included here cogently respond to our primary question: How can we in our teaching and campus work engage deeply with the political and cultural complexities with which our students are wrestling? Each essay explores conceptual tools and practical strategies for protecting academic freedom and creating spaces for intellectual growth and critical engagement.
The issue starts at the site of some of the most extreme government incursions into classrooms and campuses. Aimée Boutin, in “A Florida Woman on Teaching the Humanities in a Divided America,” reflects on how Florida’s invasive higher education laws have affected her course planning and teaching, despite her relatively privileged position as a tenured faculty member. Mindful of the fact that no one is “safe” from censorship these days and we cannot afford to be caught unaware, Boutin offers four hard-earned strategies: learn more about how exactly curriculum gets approved at your institution; avoid polarization in your program or department by always seeking to build a middle ground; look to other contexts for perspective on, and strategies to address, the current war on education; be intentional in how you communicate your convictions, especially in those moments when the middle ground gives way.
A serious goal of this Profession special issue is to provide even more opportunities for members to share how they are pushing back against the current climate of hostility. . . .
Nick Sanders and Bethany Meadows, in “Embracing Complexity: A Three-Realm Approach to Engage Contemporary Political Landscapes,” further connect local institutional settings to broader national and global issues. Sanders and Meadows describe three useful strategies to support postsecondary educators desiring to assist their students in negotiating contemporary cultural and political landscapes: recognize the role of social positionalities and ecosystems, interrogate how worldviews get reproduced, and teach toward complexity. The three strategies underscore the need for self-reflection and for an assessment of how different values, viewpoints, and practices bring complexity to in-class discussions and writing assignments. Humanities teachers have long adapted what happens in the classroom to help students meet the challenges of the wider world. The small-scale and the large-scale are linked, and helping students embrace complexity in the classroom enables them to deal with complexity outside it.
S. Shankar’s essay “Forget Freedom; or, Thinking about Harm and Harm-less-ness with the Buddha” argues that the liberal concepts of academic freedom and freedom of expression have continually come up short, providing a shield for hate speech and harm. Instead of protecting the many, free speech rights have often applied only to a select few, especially in the current chaos on campuses and the violent crackdowns on student protests. Turning to the Buddhist tradition of ahimsa, or “harm-less-ness,” Shankar proposes that we reorient our thinking about academic conduct, education, and even the work of the MLA. Such harm-less-ness, he argues, has been exemplified by peaceful pro-Palestinian student encampments on US campuses and, on a larger scale, by the Palestinian-led movement Boycott, Divestments, Sanctions, or BDS.
Shankar’s essay includes an important discussion—and critique—of MLA leadership. As we were finalizing the contents of this special issue, in advance of the 2025 convention, Anthony Alessandrini proposed Resolution 2025-1, which asked the MLA to endorse the 2005 Palestinian BDS call. At its October 2024 meeting, the Executive Council discussed the resolution and voted against forwarding it to the Delegate Assembly for a vote. This decision, Shankar argues, constitutes a troubling turn away from ahimsic values on the part of the organization.1
The final two essays are also concerned with mitigating harm and hostility, focusing on the pedagogical tools we bring to the classroom as scholars of language and literature. Gorka Bilboa Terreros, in “Deweaponizing Discourse: Language Education and Critical Thinking Skills,” argues that language educators can play a crucial role in neutralizing language that dehumanizes and depends on thought-terminating clichés. He recommends the following approaches: developing learners’ critical thinking about how “language encodes culture, reflects history, and conveys layers of meaning”; challenging students’ preconceived notions about the “cultures and peoples represented by the languages” taught; grounding language classes in “authentic materials, real-life language applications, and analysis of cultural artifacts created by the target community”; and “[e]ncouraging students to challenge and critically examine discourses and testimonies disseminated through social media.”
In his provocative contribution, “Antihostility Pedagogies: Humility, Empathy, Reciprocity,” Douglas Dowland argues for antihostility pedagogies, which he employs in his courses, from the required literature survey to topics courses in medical humanities. The three antihostility pedagogies he outlines—humility, empathy, and reciprocity—“offer alternative ways of approaching texts[,] . . . create new infrastructures for criticism[,] . . . and remind us, as scholars and as educators, to avoid perpetuating hostility in our own work.”
Humanities teachers have long adapted what happens in the classroom to help students meet the challenges of the wider world. The small-scale and the large-scale are linked, and helping students embrace complexity in the classroom enables them to deal with complexity outside it.
We write this introduction a few weeks before the 2025 MLA convention, and the special issue will be published several weeks after it. We know the meeting will provide a space to share additional strategies, insights, and experiences as we continue to navigate the increasingly fraught and contested educational landscape. We know, too, that it has never been more important for all of us, as MLA members, to come together, support each other, and draw strength from our solidarity. It’s our sincere hope that this special issue, in addition to highlighting the invaluable, difficult work members are already doing, will help create new paths for advocacy and collaboration moving forward.
Note
1 We don’t want to use this introduction to comment at length on the council’s decision, lest we distract from the essays. In short, it was made for fiduciary reasons on the basis of concerns about how the resolution could potentially compromise the association’s ability to accomplish key aspects of its mission. The resolution was discussed at the Delegate Assembly meeting at the MLA convention in January 2025 and further information can be found on the MLA website (see, e.g., MLA Executive Council, “Message”).
Works Cited
MLA Committee on Academic Freedom and Professional Rights and Responsibilities. “Report on the Current State of Academic Freedom in US Education.” Modern Language Association of America, 2023, www.mla.org/CAFPRR-2023.
MLA Executive Council. “A Letter to MLA Members about Emergency Motion 2024-1.” Modern Language Association of America, 4 Mar. 2024, www.mla.org/Resources/Advocacy/Executive-Council-Actions/2024/A-Letter-to-MLA-Members-about-Emergency-Motion-2024-1.
———. “A Message from the Executive Council about Resolution 2025-1.” Modern Language Association of America, www.mla.org/About-Us/Governance/Delegate-Assembly/Motions-and-Resolutions/FAQs-about-Resolution-2025-1/A-Message-from-the-Executive-Council-about-Resolution-2025-1. Accessed 13 Dec. 2024.
Rebecca Colesworthy is a senior editor at SUNY Press, acquiring books in literary studies, gender studies, queer studies, and education, among other fields. She writes an advice column on publishing for the Chronicle of Higher Education and is the author of Returning the Gift: Modernism and the Thought of Exchange (Oxford UP, 2018).
Dana A. Williams is the dean of the graduate school and professor of African American literature at Howard University. She was the 2024–25 president of the MLA and is the president of the Toni Morrison Society. Her book on Toni Morrison’s editorship at Random House will be published by Amistad in 2025.
Rita B. Dandridge is professor emerita, Virginia State University. A scholar of African American literature, she has published six books and numerous articles. She is serving her second year on the MLA Executive Council.