Martin Center editor Graham Hillard wrote a piece for National Review Online, “Strange Days at the Modern Language Association,” reflecting on how far academic conferences have drifted from serious scholarly inquiry. Juxtaposing the 1927 Brussels summit that gathered the world’s leading physicists to debate quantum theory with today’s MLA meeting—where thousands convene to discuss topics such as“translanguaging” and “pornographic genres”—Hillard argues that the modern academic conference has lost its intellectual seriousness. What were once forums for rigorous debate and discovery, he suggests, have too often become exercises in ideological fashion and jargon, emblematic of a broader decline in the humanities.
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