What do we expect of humanities academics? Keeping in mind that even if you make to tenure, you might have a $70-90K job in urban places where you cannot affor

What do we expect of humanities academics? Keeping in mind that even if you make to tenure, you might have a $70-90K job in urban places where you cannot afford to own a house. Indeed, the failure rate of getting tenure or to full professor is very high: academia is much like a startup in this regard, you can work for a decade and if you don't get traction... you're no longer a market participant. ... This article reads like someone starting a career who is musing about the stereotypes and flaws he presumes exist in his chosen profession and how his career relates to the broader world. Is Maximillian asking that that academics, especially those in the humanities, participate more in the political world? Surely, this is a double-edged sword: as soon as they present their ideas and knowledge forcefully in a political setting based upon their study of history, they are labeled as political. Can you be an effective advocate for change if you are labeled political? So, what do we ask humanities professors do? Outreach. Acedemics give talks at museums or libraries; they and help curators with fixing incorrect labels. They do their very best to wrap their hard-won knowledge in accessible terms. They write beautiful, amazing books that inspire people and spread ideas. But frankly, not everyone has an idea or insight that's generally applicable and worthy enough to have general public visibility. Service. Acedemics often have part time jobs doing all sorts of service roles such as assisting undergraduates with their careers, participating in a broader administrative organization called a University, incrementally advancing their field, doing peer review, and the like. This takes time, because working with people and ideas takes time. Research. We ask academics to be fountains of knowledge in their tiny itty-bitty field, to know each other in their field, and to maintain and advance the state of understanding. This means constant reading of what almost everyone in their field writes. They might even coalesce thought in the field, condense knowledge, and express this clearly to specialists and non-specialists alike. Education. We expect academics to teach, and teach well. For the most part, in humanities, we expect them to use their field as an example play ground for students to learn to think deeply, reason about problems, express themselves logically and coherently, etc. This is challenging work, especially when so many students come to college ill-prepared with basic problems in thought formulation and expression. Yet, they do it. What warms an academics heart is when they get a letter, some 2-3 years or 10 years later where someone says: "you helped me learn to me think, and that has made all the difference in my life". Do all academics do all of these perfectly? Probably not. However, for a high (or even medium) double-digit salary for a life's dedication to a field and education, what do we expect them to be? superheros?