In a Dark Wood

THAT THERE IS A CRISIS in the humanities will be news to no one in American higher education. Diagnoses, defenses, and remedies have been so commonplace in writing about the subject, for so long, that this crisis, even to those in the midst of it, can feel like a steady state, ran an op-ed titled “The Apocalypse of the Academy.” And that was before Covid-19 turned everyone lucky enough to have a laptop and decent broadband into a headshot on Zoom. My computer keeps telling me: “Your connection is unstable.”