We should all want our ideas to find many audiences, not just the fewest, best, or supposedly smartest readers, viewers, or listeners. Ultimately, faculty members, staff members, and students depend on public support for our efforts in classrooms and libraries-in person, in print, or digitally-whether we work at private or public institutions. In the long run, research addressed to nonacademics may be just as beneficial to the creation and dissemination of knowledge as our peer-reviewed scholarly books and articles. We can’t decide if we should value-or how much value we should assign to-speaking to those who aren’t seen as “one of us.” Yet our profession will be strengthened, and research outputs of all kinds improved, if more of us choose to engage with a public beyond our students and scholarly communities. The academic humanities have a public problem.
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