(Wl-2816)-An Obituary to Literature: Notes from a University on Life Support

This article aims to critically examine the disintegration of humanities disciplines, particularly literature and philosophy, amid rising neoliberal and market-oriented academic paradigms. Drawing from examples across global academic scenarios, it explores how administrative indifference and rationales mired in spreadsheets, cost-benefit analyses, and employability metrics are gradually burying disciplines foundational to critical judgements, empathy, and democratic thoughts. From West Virginia and Canterbury to Andhra and Delhi, closures of these disciplines are framed as imperative rational restructuring. However, they mask deeper ideological recasting that favors profitability over intellectual inquiry. The article strongly contends that justifying the existence of the humanities through their utility to STEM and other lucrative sectors is both reductive and complicit. Instead, it calls for an unapologetic affirmation of the humanities as possessing public values that sustain the very engine of knowledge production, ethical reflection, dissent, criticality, and civilizational memory. At stake is not plainly the future of some academic disciplines, but the pivotal architecture of universities – and by extension, society itself.