Our profession as teachers and scholars of language and literature is in the midst of what many regard as a cataclysmic transition to a future that we can see but dimly. Most of our departments face changing, often decreasing, enrollments despite urgent demands for new courses; much of our research time is eaten up by various service-connected obstacles as well as retraining.

Some of our most important professional journals are participating in the debate that attempts to follow this transition. The January 2001 issue of PMLA, for example, highlights the "globalization" of literary studies (in several invited articles), as well as an alarming reduction in submitted articles to the journal (see, for example, Carlos J. Alonso, "Editor's Column: Lost Moorings -- PMLA and Its Audience"). The Chronicle of Higher Education has published a bombshell of an interview with the President of Drake University, who closed down the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures and fired all its faculty, tenured or not. What ramifications may issues and events such as these have on other universities and their budget-weary administrators? We hope for "renewal" in the humanities, but seem to have to contend more with their systematic elimination.

We would like to hear how you interpret these pieces of news in our field, and/or what solutions you may suggest. We would welcome comments and discussion on these issues, and the Forum section of the Rocky Mountain Review is designated for just such dialogue on the current events or climate in our field of language and literature.