I started getting a real sense around 10-12 years ago that the people entering humanities graduate programmes increasingly weren’t doing so out of affinity for the subject, but simply because being an Assistant Professor seemed like a nice, high-status occupation.

Academia apeared interchangeable with any number of other professional occupations—law; consulting—which a particular person *might* seek to explore. Subject specialisation seemed of decidedly secondary importance, like an extracurricular picked up to fill out a resumé.

Seeing the casual indifference, disregard, or contempt many younger academics seem to have for their disciplines and institutions, I can’t help feeling academia (and libraries, museums, and cultural heritage) are reaping some kind of whirlwind.

Academia isn’t activism, nor is it politics. By believing that it is, academics are paying a price that few can currently comprehend, but which will no doubt be profound.

In exchange for opportunism, social media clout, or “relevance,” we will see the permanent transformation or demise of those institutions and (perhaps) an end to processes of cultural transmission they have traditionally performed.