Contents: Preface Acknowledgements I. Higher Education: Policy, Pressures and the Public Chapter 1: Human Rights, Higher Education and Pedagogy Chapter 2: The Public University, Public Good and Public Accountability Chapter 3: The ‘Gift’ of Higher Education Chapter 4: Autonomy or Academic Capitalism Chapter 5: Rankings and Responsibility Chapter 6: In Pursuit of ‘World Class Universities’ Chapter 7: The Spectre of Rankings Chapter 8: Digital Education Initiatives Chapter 9: NEP – Reinventing Higher Education? II. The Classroom and the University Chapter 10: Academic Freedom and Academic Responsibility Chapter 11: Digitized Learning Chapter 12: The Camera and the Classroom Chapter 13: Rethinking Academic Freedom Chapter 14: The University’s Many Questions Chapter 15: Universities, Language, Freedom Chapter 16: Knowledge in the Digital Era Chapter 17: The Entrepreneurial University Chapter 18: The Managerial University and the Liberal Arts Chapter 19: Intellectual Autonomy, Intellectual Property and the New Enclosures Chapter 20: Marketing Academia III. Literature, Aesthetics and the Humanities Chapter 21: The Literary Aesthetic and Reading for the Other Chapter 22: The Liberal Arts in the Age of Illiberalism (with Anna Kurian) Chapter 23: Questions of the Humanities and its ‘Value’ Chapter 24: Poetry from the Ghettos Chapter 25: Poetry, Walls and Freedom Chapter 26: Language and the Humanities Chapter 27: Why We Need the Humanities Now More Than Ever Chapter 28: Humanities in the Age of Extremes Chapter 29: Humanities of Crisis: Climate Change and the Discipline Chapter 30: Humanities and the Public Good Chapter 31: The Liberal Arts and Authority in the Digital Age Chapter 32: Pedagogy Online Chapter 33: Fear of Small Numbers Chapter 34: Populism and the Academia Chapter 35: Poetry and Climate Precarity Chapter 36: Poetry and Protests Chapter 37: Poetry in Times of Terror Chapter 38: Power of the Aesthetic Chapter 39: Public Knowledge Chapter 40: Sanitizing Literature Chapter 41: The Enemy in Poetry Chapter 42: When Hope and History Rhyme Chapter 43: In-discipline Chapter 44: Writers, Reading, Freedom Chapter 45: Genocide and Language Postscript: The ‘Doomed University’ About the Book: The Humanities have defined, for centuries now, what we mean by the public, the demos, and therefore, democracy as well. The essays in this collection bring to the interested reader concerns that the Humanities as a discipline have addressed for some time now: atrocities and human rights, cultural memory, difference and dissent, climate crisis, the space of the university and the state of the disciplines within, and the transformation of the public university system itself through policies and pressures of different kinds. Written in response to immediate contexts, these reflections on higher education and the liberal arts, particularly the role of the literary – its ‘sanitization’, its connection with dissent and freedom and the ways in which the humanities deals with critical concerns such as climate change – address the public through the frames of humanistic understanding, in the language of public debate. About the Author: Pramod K. Nayar holds the UNESCO Chair in Vulnerability Studies at the University of Hyderabad, where he teaches in the Department of English. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the English Association, and a member of the Advisory Board of the Sahitya Akademi. His books from Viva include An Introduction to Cultural Studies (2008) and From Text to Theory (2017). His most recent books include Nuclear Cultures (2023), Life/Writing (2023), Alzheimer’s Disease Memoirs (2022), The Human Rights Graphic Novel (2021), Essays in Celebrity Culture (2021), Indian Travel Writing in the Age of Empire (2020), Ecoprecarity (2019), besides the edited collections, From Discovery to the Civilisational Mission: English Writings on India (6 Volumes, 2022) and Colonial Education and India 1781-1945 (5 Volumes, 2019). His essays have appeared in journals such as Modern Fiction Studies, Ariel, Studies in Travel Writing, Prose Studies, Celebrity Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, and also in anthologies on posthumanism, celebrity culture, environmental humanities.