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To remain relevant, scholarly societies must adapt to the rapidly changing academic, professional and political landscape. They need to move beyond their traditional role of conferring honors and address the pressing challenges facing today’s academics, such as shifting job markets, changing research priorities and evolving pedagogical needs.
This shift requires a focus on research, professional development, career support, interdisciplinary collaboration and advocacy to ensure that these societies serve as vital resources for their members.
The future of scholarly associations depends on embracing a broader mission. Rather than focusing solely on prestige through journal publications and paper presentations, they must take on the critical work of championing professional growth and securing the future of the academic profession. This includes providing robust career development opportunities, fostering cross-institutional collaboration and creating a more inclusive, supportive and resilient academic community.
At the same time, these organizations must act as advocates for their members, addressing the structural challenges within academia and actively promoting the value of their disciplines in a shifting cultural and political environment. By expanding their focus, scholarly societies can become indispensable allies to scholars at all stages of their careers and ensure the continued vitality of their fields.
I recently participated in a regional convening that was unlike the usual conferences I attend. For one thing, it was teaching oriented, focusing specifically on how to teach gateway history courses, whether in U.S. or history or specialized areas such as African American, Latino/a and Texas history.
But what made the event truly distinctive was its inclusivity, bringing together educators from four-year and two-year colleges, universities, and high schools, representing all parts of Texas, but also representatives from state agencies that have an interest in history—archives, museums and local and state historical societies.
Organized by the American Historical Association’s senior program analyst Julia Brookins and held at Texas State University in San Marcos, this convening was a wake-up call: If scholarly societies are to remain relevant, they must radically rethink their role.
Traditionally, scholarly societies like the AHA have been prestige-conferring institutions, where leadership positions and offices were typically held by individuals from elite academic institutions, reinforcing established academic hierarchies. Annual meetings served primarily as job markets, where candidates competed for positions and sessions of paper presentations often took a back seat to book exhibits and networking opportunities.
However, this model is now outdated. Attendance at the AHA’s annual meeting is a fraction of what it once was, and with many paper presentations now available online, the necessity of in-person conferences has diminished. Recognizing these changes, the AHA’s leadership, spearheaded by executive director James Grossman, has started rethinking the organization’s role and purpose.
The future of scholarly associations like the AHA lies in transforming themselves into entities resembling unions, guilds or especially professional organizations such as the American Bar Association or the Association of American Medical Colleges. Their mission should shift from primarily conferring prestige to offering more practical services, such as conducting policy-relevant research, providing professional development and advocating strongly for their members’ interests.
These initiatives are already in motion, but they must be ramped up and fast-tracked to meet the growing challenges.
One critical area for evolution is fostering collaboration between different educational institutions, from four-year universities to two-year colleges and high schools. By building these bridges, scholarly societies can create a more integrated academic community, where best practices and shared resources are available across institutional boundaries.
Another crucial function should be increased responsibility for professional development, especially as scholars face increasingly precarious career landscapes. With the rise of adjunct positions and the decline of tenure-track opportunities, many early-career scholars need support in navigating alternative career paths. Scholarly societies can step in by offering targeted workshops, mentorship programs and public history initiatives that help members diversify their career options.
In addition, these organizations need to expand their research role by collecting and disseminating data on job placements, salary trends and faculty demographics. This data will be essential for informing discussions about the state of the profession and shaping its future. Having a clear understanding of employment trends, disparities and challenges is key to addressing the systemic issues facing the academic job market.
A major part of this transformation involves rethinking how these societies are financed. Currently, individual membership dues are the primary source of revenue, but these fees often limit participation, especially for underpaid adjuncts, early-career scholars, graduate students and high school teachers. By reducing individual dues, scholarly societies could encourage broader participation, making them more inclusive and representative of the academic community at large.
To balance the financial equation, departments and institutions, which benefit from the prestige and support offered by associations like the AHA, should contribute more significantly. Increased institutional support would provide a stable financial base, allowing the AHA to expand its services without overburdening individual members.
In this reimagined structure, academic departments and institutions would take on a larger role in sustaining the AHA’s mission. These contributions would benefit entire faculties, as the AHA plays a central role in shaping curricula, supporting research and maintaining disciplinary standards. In return, institutions would have access to an array of resources, including professional development opportunities, policy advocacy and the chance to shape the future of the profession.
By evolving in these ways, scholarly associations like the AHA can remain relevant in the modern academic landscape, better supporting scholars at all career stages and ensuring that the field continues to thrive in an increasingly complex and competitive environment.
It’s not just our professional societies that need to evolve—faculty members themselves must also reconsider how they view their roles and responsibilities. In today’s academic landscape, the individualistic ethic that has long dominated the culture of higher education needs to give way to a broader, more collective mindset. Faculty must begin to think beyond their own research agendas, departmental priorities or personal career trajectories and develop a deeper concern for the profession as a whole. This means advocating not just for themselves, but for the adjunct faculty, high school teachers and other educators who are integral to the health and vitality of the academic ecosystem.
Historically, academic careers have been driven by individual accomplishment—publishing, securing grants, gaining tenure and achieving personal recognition within a field. But this focus on individual success often sidelines those who are most vulnerable in the profession, including adjuncts and contingent faculty, whose contributions to teaching and institutional functioning are often undervalued and precarious. It also overlooks high school teachers, who play a critical role in shaping the pipeline of future students and scholars but are rarely included in the academic conversation. To strengthen the profession holistically, faculty need to embrace a broader sense of professional responsibility that includes advocating for fair pay, job security and professional development opportunities for all educators, not just those with tenure or full-time positions.
Collaboration must become a core value within the academic profession. In particular, faculty should engage more deeply in cross-institutional collaboration, building stronger ties between universities, community colleges and high schools. Teaching and instructional resource development should be a shared enterprise, with faculty working together to develop innovative curricula, digital tools and other resources that benefit educators at all levels. By sharing ideas, strategies and resources, faculty can create more dynamic and engaging learning experiences that better serve students across a wide range of educational settings. In doing so, they can also help bridge the gap between K-12 education and higher education, fostering a more cohesive and collaborative approach to learning.
Professional development also needs to be reimagined as a collective endeavor. Faculty should not view professional growth as an individual responsibility but as an opportunity for communal learning and improvement. Institutions should create more spaces for faculty to engage in peer mentoring, workshops and interdisciplinary collaborations that allow them to learn from one another and support each other’s development. This could involve sharing best practices in teaching, navigating the challenges of career transitions and addressing the emotional and intellectual demands of academic life. A shift toward collaborative professional development would also support faculty members in adapting to the evolving demands of the profession, such as incorporating new technologies, addressing student mental health concerns or engaging in public scholarship.
Ultimately, this shift toward a more collective ethic will require a cultural change within the academic profession. Faculty need to recognize that their success is intertwined with the well-being of the profession as a whole and that the health of academia depends on fostering a more inclusive, supportive and collaborative environment. By advocating for the rights and well-being of all educators—whether full-time professors, adjuncts or high school teachers—faculty can help create a stronger, more resilient academic community that is better equipped to meet the challenges of the future.
In short, the evolution of our professional societies must be accompanied by a parallel transformation in how faculty view their roles and responsibilities. By embracing collaboration, advocating for equity across the profession and committing to the collective good, faculty can help shape a more inclusive and sustainable future for education.
Did you know that not one of the top 40 best-selling printed fiction books in United States is written for adults? Or that half of American adults did not read a single book last year? Or that a growing number of entering freshmen at the most highly selective universities did not read an entire book in high school?
In discussing the reading skills of his undergraduates, a former Columbia colleague said, “It’s not that they don’t want to do the reading. It’s that they don’t know how.”
Those of us in the humanities must respond to these alarming trends—not by lamenting the decline in reading, but by acting collectively and purposefully through our scholarly societies.
For too long, the upper echelons of academia, particularly within the humanities, have operated under the banner of academic freedom while cultivating an individualistic ethic that has ultimately harmed the humanistic enterprise.
Academic freedom is crucial for the pursuit of knowledge, but it has often been used as a rationale to avoid collective responsibility, particularly concerning the broader landscape of humanities education. This individualistic focus has allowed scholars to prioritize their own research, publications and career advancement while neglecting the overall health of the humanities, both in higher education and the K-12 system, not to mention in the archives, museum and academic publishing worlds.
This narrow focus has had profound consequences. By ignoring the collective responsibility to nurture humanities education as a whole—particularly in fostering future scholars and strengthening the infrastructure for teaching in schools and community colleges—senior scholars have allowed the humanities to languish. While elite faculty pursued specialized, sometimes insular academic interests, the broader foundation of humanities education, including introductory courses, general education and high school instruction, has eroded, with early-college/dual-degree courses of uneven quality proliferating while rigorous scoring of AP exams erodes. This neglect is reflected in dwindling student enrollments, shrinking humanities departments and growing public skepticism about the value of humanistic disciplines.
Instead of engaging with K-12 educators, community colleges and public institutions to sustain the humanities, many academics have prioritized personal accolades and grants while the foundation of humanities education has decayed. This disconnect has left high school humanities teachers underresourced, college departments underfunded and students increasingly disengaged from fields perceived as irrelevant to contemporary concerns.
The time for lamentation is over. We must move beyond decrying the state of the humanities and instead act collectively through reimagined and revitalized professional societies to rebuild and reinvigorate humanities education at all levels.
Organizations like the American Historical Association and the Modern Language Association must evolve from their traditional roles as prestige-conferring institutions to become proactive advocates for the humanities. These societies need to develop a comprehensive vision for the future of humanities education—one that goes beyond supporting cutting-edge research to include commitments to improving teaching, curriculum development and public engagement at the K-12 and community college levels.
Leadership within the humanities must see themselves as stewards of the entire educational pipeline, not just the highest academic rungs. Working collaboratively, they can ensure that the humanities remain vibrant and relevant for generations to come. This requires advocating for stronger partnerships with K-12 schools, engaging more deeply with the public and lobbying for increased funding and resources for educators at all levels—not just those in elite institutions.
Professional societies are uniquely positioned to facilitate this shift. By offering professional development for both college faculty and K-12 teachers, supporting adjunct and contingent faculty and fostering connections between humanities scholars across different educational institutions, they can help bridge the gap between higher education and the broader public.
Furthermore, these societies need to become forceful advocates in policy debates, articulating how humanities education contributes to a critically engaged and well-rounded society.
In short, the humanities cannot thrive if their survival is tied solely to individual academic freedom and personal success. The upper reaches of academia must embrace their responsibility to the broader educational ecosystem, acknowledging that the future of the humanities depends on collective action and a renewed commitment to rebuilding a strong, sustainable educational infrastructure.
Through reimagined professional societies and a willingness to engage across all levels of education, faculty can help restore the humanities to their rightful place at the center of intellectual and civic life.
