Columns by Tina Lu

[T]hings are different now. We are living in an age of radical disruption. The unthinkable happens on a daily basis, it seems, existential threats so pervasive we can only brace ourselves for the next blow: a list of names that includes friends and mentors handed over to the Department of Education, museums and national parks censored, a barrage of book bans.

This moment highlights precisely what the MLA is and what we’re for: the only organization that represents all teachers, researchers, and students of languages and literatures, connecting everyone from undergraduates to scholars at all ranks and institutions. We are a noisy, loving, cantankerous, highly verbal family connected by a shared calling, and it is only by representing all of us—from graduate students to teachers and scholars at all ranks and institutions—that the MLA can fight back as it is now.