A perception of a crisis within the humanities is far from new. At least since the late 1960s, higher-education institutions in Britain and America have struggled against a recurrent ‘crisis of legitimation’.2 Although the contours of the wider political, economic and social landscapes have changed significantly in the intervening decades, the underlying source of anxiety has remained fairly consistent: how can we justify what we do – not just to ourselves, but to the world at large? Whether the crisis is any more real or urgent than it was several decades ago has recently been a subject of heated debate. In the wake of one particularly polemical call to arms, the historians Deborah Cohen and Peter Mandler have argued strongly against alarmist narratives of decline, citing the huge expansion in student numbers, as well as the new possibilities for public engagement created by the internet and social media platforms, as evidence of the contrary.3 The detrimental impact of ‘crisis rhetoric’ on public perceptions of the humanities has similarly been challenged by the musicologist David Blake, who observes that although the discourse is usually invoked by scholars campaigning for a more progressive discipline, the language of crisis ironically risks promoting the very image it sets out to

中文翻译：

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为什么我们不能和睦相处

对人文科学危机的看法远非新鲜事。至少自 1960 年代后期以来，英国和美国的高等教育机构一直在与反复出现的“合法化危机”作斗争。 2 尽管更广泛的政治、经济和社会格局的轮廓在此期间发生了重大变化，但潜在的根源焦虑的比例一直相当一致：我们如何证明我们所做的事情是合理的——不仅是对我们自己，而且是对整个世界？这场危机是否比几十年前更真实或更紧迫，最近一直是一个激烈争论的话题。在一场特别具有争议性的武装呼吁之后，历史学家黛博拉·科恩和彼得·曼德勒强烈反对关于衰落的危言耸听的叙述，理由是学生人数大幅增加，