by J.C.White – 2025
Somewhere between Shakespeare’s skull and a student’s $80,000 master’s thesis titled “Toxic Masculinity in the Taming of the Shrew: Patriarchy, Pizza, and the Politics of Power,” a quiet funeral is taking place in America’s English departments.
Enrollment in college literature programs has fallen by nearly fifty percent since 2012. The corpse of the humanities is being wheeled down the hall, and the mourners, those few remaining professors with ink still on their fingers, are too busy writing grant proposals on “Decolonizing Milton” to notice.
The rest of us, the bewildered taxpayers and wistful readers, stand at the window, watching the last flickering candle of literary tradition be replaced by a PowerPoint on Intersectional Readings of Frankenstein’s Monster as a Pre-Nonbinary Symbol.
And thus begins the paradox of our time: a generation that calls itself enlightened has stopped reading the very books that created enlightenment.
The Crisis of the Thermometer
The problem, as one wag put it, is that modern academia is “using a thermometer to weigh itself.”
Instead of teaching literature as literature, many universities now teach it as sociology, psychology, or Marxist confession. You no longer study Hamlet to understand the tormented soul of man, but to count the number of microaggressions he commits before Act II.
Jane Austen, who once taught us the ironies of social ambition, now serves as a case study in the “absence of servant voices.” Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe is no longer the tale of survival and moral testing, but a colonialist tragedy of unequal narrative agency. And the professors, flushed with self-importance, announce these revelations as though they’ve discovered oxygen.
In truth, they’ve only discovered that literature isn’t a sociology textbook, and they resent it for that.
How Shakespeare Became Problematic
One particularly brave professor recently declared:
“To require English majors to read Shakespeare is to perpetuate racism, antisemitism, toxic masculinity, and patriarchal oppression.”
By this standard, the Department of English should be replaced by a Department of Trigger Warnings.
What’s truly comic is that these self-styled revolutionaries are rebelling against men who already solved their moral puzzles four centuries ago.
Take Juliet, who asks, “What’s in a name?”—a question that could serve as a gentle memo to today’s academic panels on gender identity. Or Othello, the noble Black Moor, whose tragedy exposes racism not as a virtue but a moral rot so corrosive it devours both victim and perpetrator alike.
If these professors could read with half the humility of their students, they might see that the Bard himself answered their critiques before they were born.
The Great Literary Inversion
What has happened is an inversion of intellectual order. Students no longer approach the master’s to learn, but to judge. They arrive, not as apprentices at the feet of Dante, but as inspectors from the Department of Cultural Compliance.
This is what Shakespeare warned of in Troilus and Cressida:
“Take but degree away, untune that string, and, hark, what discord follows!”
In other words: when the young stop respecting the wisdom of the old, chaos reigns. When students rewrite Shakespeare instead of reading him, the university ceases to be a place of learning and becomes a correctional facility for genius.
The Sociology of What’s Missing
The reigning trend in literary study is now the absence hunt: finding what’s not in the book, then writing 30 pages about it.
Where are the servants in Austen?
Why doesn’t Friday narrate Crusoe?
Why does Milton ignore the labor conditions of the fallen angels?
One might as well ask why the Mona Lisa isn’t smiling more broadly, or why David by Michelangelo doesn’t have a LinkedIn profile.
Art is what it is because of what it leaves out. Michelangelo himself said that David was already in the marble, he simply chipped away what was not David.
Great literature is made not by what it includes, but by what it chooses to exclude. To demand that every book speak with every voice is to demand that art become bureaucracy.
The Sun and the Maggots
The most tragic misunderstanding of the modern classroom is the belief that to depict a sin is to endorse it. If Shakespeare writes about racism, he must be racist; if Homer describes war, he must be imperialist.
But as Hamlet reminds us:
“For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god kissing carrion…”
The Sun does not cause decay, it only reveals it. Likewise, Shakespeare did not create misogyny or bigotry; he illuminated them with such brilliance that they can never again hide in the dark.
Blaming Shakespeare for racism is like blaming the Sun for the smell.
When the Masters Become the Students
The ultimate absurdity of this academic decline is that the least wise are now instructing the wisest. Students, armed with hashtags and fragile egos, are “interrogating” Shakespeare’s merit before they’ve even read him.
This is the intellectual equivalent of asking a toddler to critique gravity.
Wisdom, once the goal of education, has been replaced by certainty, the most dangerous illusion of all. And so, the universities that once produced Milton, Melville, and Morrison now produce graduates who can quote Foucault fluently but cannot read a paragraph of Faulkner without demanding a content warning.
The Last Lecture
The great irony of the woke academy is that it preaches diversity of thought while enforcing uniformity of ideology. It destroys the very thing literature was invented to preserve: the uniqueness of the individual mind. Kids end up hating literature because they’ve been taught to believe it’s inherently racist, misogynistic, and worst of all, written by white men.
Ralph Ellison understood this when he wrote,
“One can do nothing about choosing one’s relatives, but one can, as an artist, choose one’s ancestors.”
He, a black man in America, chose Hemingway, Eliot, Dostoevsky, and Faulkner, because art transcends race, creed, and politics. It is the most individual act a human can perform.
And that, dear reader, is precisely what modern academia fears most: the individual.
A Modest Proposal for the Professors
If I may offer a humble suggestion to our new literary theorists: when the enrollment in your programs drops another fifty percent, perhaps it’s not because society no longer values literature, but because you stopped teaching it in favor of sociology.
Return to the words. Return to the sentences that outlive their authors. Stop lecturing Hamlet about gender equity and let him speak his immortal pain.
The masters solved these problems centuries ago. They’re not modern problems. The only thing left for us to do is listen.
“The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.”
— All’s Well That Ends Well, Act 4, Scene 3
If only our professors believed that. Then perhaps literature, and the human soul that once loved it, might stand a chance at resurrection.
Ramblings & Revelations 
Responses
I forget who said it but the saying goes that the world’s greatest horrors aren’t thought up in dark, rat infested dungeons. rather, they are dreamt up in beautiful walled gardens of insulation and narcissism. great post! Mike
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Perfect segue Michael. Thank you.
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Great post! My daughter is in the last year of high school … it’s an all-girls school and they are studying Shakespeare … they discuss the ‘how far we’ve come / how far we haven’t’ aspects of the play, with some eye-rolling and heaving sighs, but they do not throw it all away, they recognize it as a work of its time, which also has themes that transcend their time – as all great works do. Linda :)
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Thank you Linda. That’s at least somewhat positive news. I just hope her time in university will land her in a great program. There are still wonderful professors out there who get it. I love a good gothic tale so I tend to focus on the macabre and dysfunction. But by all means I’m not writing about the entire academy. That said, if she’s a fan of literature, she may want to do a few interviews to find best fit for her.
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Sounds like a plan – she’s an avid reader, and 1/3 of her current curriculum is English … but… she’s hoping to get into a Science degree for uni next year (much to my English-loving shock, and my mother who was an English-teacher and has been feeding her books since birth!)
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Regardless of her ultimate path, it does seem that your daughter shares in the family’s matriarchal love for the humanities. And it’s a strong sign of her intellectual maturity and a nurturing family environment, that she’s able to recognize there’s something else she loves too, maybe more than humanities, and has confidence to pursue that other thing in recognition that you and granny will be proud of her either way.
Good job Linda!
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Oh thank you! Now I’m all weepy … she’s doing her big end-of-school-exams at the moment and we’re all feeling a little brittle … your comment makes it feel worthwhile! Linda :)
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What a fascinating subject. However did you come up with it? I had not a clue about this nonfictional subject (I’m coming to learn that you also write nonfiction). I suspect that my days in literature classrooms predate your hypothesis, as I don’t remember looking for these bumps in the road. If only I could get back to reading again and recall the words for what they are.
I have a linked concern myself: where have all the bookstores gone (ala Peter, Paul, and Mary)? If we can’t read, we can’t discern. I’m off on a tangent. Sorry.
You’ve written a very thought-provoking article. Thanks for sharing it.
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I’ve become a voracious reader, Warren, in my quest to become a more effective writer. I guess it comes with the territory. And while it does grow my arsenal of writing techniques, stealing (researching) every style and technique I see, it also introduces me to inspirations, both positive and negative, that prompt me to spew forth opinion now and then. And this one was close to heart. Thank you for reading it and sharing your thoughts. You say you’re not reading much these days, but I can always count on you to read the trash I write. Not sure what that’s says, Warren, but I’m very appreciative.
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Chris – You do not write trash. If you did, I wouldn’t be reading your oeuvres (that’s my big word for the day). I’m not reading much because I can’t get English-language books where I live (Albania). It’s a real consternation for me.
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Oh that’s sad. If you can email me with your address, I’d be delighted to send you a book or two. I’ve been recently introduced to some fantastic Japanese authors who write beautifully. I’d love to extend the same kindness to you. Maybe something unexpected.
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Thanks for the book offer. I assume you mean electronic books. I have sources for these. I haven’t uploaded many, as I’ on the computer all day and like to think I don’t have to be in the evening (though I will watch a movie). I appreciate you thinking of me with book offers, but I think I can handle this without bothering you. Thanks. You are so kind!
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I think the crux of all of this is the fact that we have (and by this I am suggesting the world) been taught a conquers tale as history. If we would have been taught the history of the world as it actually happened- the fact that various works of literature promote the truths of their time would not stand out as threats to modern day society- but rather as an inflection of the times. But when you live in an era where book banning is once again a thing- and realize neither history nor literature has quelled the ignorance that sires such travesty? Where do you start?
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Great point. And a question I don’t think I can answer. I think it starts with brave individuals, as it always does. People are mostly followers. They follow political dogma, a new fangled idea, a religion, a brash leader, or just the policies of the day. But when you see something beautiful (to you) being made ugly, you do your best, within means and rationality, to illuminate the perceived injustice. Using whatever talents you have.
Not necessarily waiting on some big rally where the like-minded stand together and protest. That’s just another type of following.
But using your own voice, your own intellect, to shine a light on the subject in the way that only an individual with personal feelings and emotionally articulated wrongdoings could do effectively.
At the end of the day, these are merely my own feelings. Some will agree, some will disagree, some will see both sides. I’m just writing for myself, because that’s what I’m moved to do. Not radically, just rationally.
And if the right person reads it and agrees, and knows which buttons to push to save these programs OR could just improve the situation, move the needle an iota, then I’ve done my part.
I don’t know how to fix it. I just know that I was moved to write about how I feel. That’s what I do these days. Essays or travelogues or macabre fiction, I just paint my ideas in words and hope they resonate.
Thank you for contributing to the discussion.
Chris
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The point is Chris- you are making us think. And I have to believe that is a good first step.
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I appreciate you Violet.
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“Jane Austen, who once taught us the ironies of social ambition, now serves as a case study in the ‘absence of servant voices.’ Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe is no longer the tale of survival and moral testing, but a colonialist tragedy of unequal narrative agency. And the professors, flushed with self-importance, announce these revelations as though they’ve discovered oxygen.”
This brings to mind Rush Limbaugh and how he would sometimes playfully pick the upcoming weekend’s NFL games using the “environmentalist wacko method.” Playful stuff, along with some of his parody commercials, like “KOOKS” (Keep Our Own Kids Safe), describing the dangers of soccer. Sadly, the jokes on us today, as the reality has become crazier than the parody.
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Well, I’ve never been compared with Limbaugh before, but hey, whatever works. I must be schizophrenic. I have days you could literally compare me to PeeWee Herman and I’d have to own those too.
My attraction to gothic stories really draws me into writing essays about the state of our society. Isn’t that something.
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So true how literature is difficult to teach due to the inability of the contemporary audience to objectively view the past. Good point how Shakespeare didn’t invent the issues of his day he merely continued the conversation.
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Thank you for your own observations Pam.
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Agree with every word.
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I think there were always less than wonderful professors. At least that was my experience. I got my degree via what seemed like endless years of night classes. Anyhow, back in my “school days”, when I listened to a lecture, I just jotted down notes needed to pass the class. I didn’t really focus on much else. But along the way, I read some good books and was exposed to a variety of ideas/facts/opinions. And I think, if we are honest, most students (or readers) form their own opinions of a book. Sure, a professor might guide a student, but in the end, it is the student who is reading it and absorbing it. I hope that literature remains a valued part of all schools. And I also hope music and art classes don’t get cut from public schools due to lack of funding. A person needs books, music, and art as much as we need food to survive. Great post.
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Thank you Diana. Of course you’re right. I think my fear and motivation for this piece was the shocking realization of a 50% drop in enrollment for literature centric programs; a drop that’s occurred in slightly more than one decade. That number was startling to me.
So yes, there’s always been those mediocre and sometimes horrible professors out there, but also the great ones who’ve changed our perspectives on subjects that stay with us. And if they’re teaching a subject, any subject, you’d hope that the change they’re bringing about is a positive one. And I can’t help but to believe that what’s happening must be the opposite of what we’d hope to expect.
Thanks for reading and contributing to the conversation, as always.
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Love the title
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Thank you La’ Tasha
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