Traffic in the Humanities

Caught up in the swirling ideas and people at an MLA convention, I have sometimes experienced an irresistible sense of carnival in the air, especially when catching a hurried drink between sessions at one of the crowded ho tel bars. And of course "the MLA" (as the convention is frequendy called, sometimes without even the article) in many ways is a carnival?or at least is carnivalesque. Not only because of its revelry, or the intellectual inver sions of authority found in many of the papers, but also because the con vention, like carnival, is, underneath its surface chaos, highly structured. I was reminded again of the convention's ritualized aspect while organizing the 2007 Presidential Forum. As part of that preparation, I did a brief review of previous forums. Of course the speakers are different each year, except for their uniform eminence. But the structure of the forum itself has remained pretty much the same for several years now. Even more uni form is the underlying theme pursued each year: since the early 1990s, past presidents, for all their professional and personal differences, have in one way or another almost all organized the forum as a defense of the humanities. The year 2007 was, in this sense at least, no different. I suspect we are all not only responding to current events but also harking back to 1991. That was the year when the MLA Executive Council raised questions about a particular appointment to the NEH board, arousing a storm of attacks against the MLA in the media that were of a totally unexpected