a) We should resist attempts to marginalize the humanities within the curriculum adn efforts to make the university a business model. The humanities should open up new worlds and a more comparative approach to the study of literature should be promoted. Humanistic education has to be interdisciplinary and we have a role to play in shaping it by educational principles and not by financial reasons.
b) I am deeply conerned about the academy becoming business. Students are viewed as clients and professors are asked to spend time on assessment and merit procedures that rely on quantification and, therefore, fail. Teaching and learning has nothing to do with that.
c) How do we read and write? How do we teach reading and writing? We should build bridges between literature programs and creative writing programs. I am concerned about the erosion in teaching and evaluation in our schools. How do we evaluate? In that sense, we need to look at the question of what limits us personally as teachers.
d) Graduate students are often ill prepared for careers. I am particularly concerned with the undermining of undergraduate and graduate education. Serious literary and critical books are being put out of circulation sometimes by just a more fashionable market.
e) Athough many professorial members are engaged in the teaching of language courses, language teaching as such, with some exceptions, is not necessarily their specialty nor their primary interest. That creates a problem that needs to be addressed.
