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It’s very interesting to compare mainstream reactions to the respective crises of science vs the humanities in the US.
Faced with widespread public distrust of science, the spread of anti-vaxxer conspiracies, and political efforts to undermine public funding for it, folks blame politicians and corporate interests and the media, along with citizens themselves for their own scientific illiteracy
When it comes to the humanities, though, the main culprit is always humanists: their jargon (“who can even understand this?”), their failure to justify their existence (“this analysis is not relevant to me”), and their (presumed) radicalism
I don’t know 
but actually I think the gutting of humanities is not really about any of that, though some of it may be critique-able in various ways and for other reasons
but actually I think the gutting of humanities is not really about any of that, though some of it may be critique-able in various ways and for other reasons
To clarify: I also think the mainstream assessment of/reaction to a crisis around scientific knowledge & authority can also be misguided in its own way. It just seems telling that we usually don’t jump straight to blaming research scientists for the way they do their work
Sorry to dwell on this but, I mean, what is the implicit causal claim here? That at some point humanities scholarship was open and accessible to non-experts and had a clear utilitarian purpose and so was popular, but now it’s not/it doesn’t and so is in crisis?
I would not say thay ‘broad accessibility to non-experts’ and ‘obvious uses for these ideas outside academia’ are primary (or even discernible) attributes of the humanities scholarship of earlier eras with which I am familiar
