Jonathan Marks of Commentary Magazine points to two pictures that capture the priorities of the Modern Language Association. Click the links in the excerpt below to see them.

Misplaced Priorities in Academia: A Tale of Two Pictures

Toward the top of his piece on the debate about Israel at this year’s Modern Language Association conference, Joel Griffith posts a picture he took of the Delegate Assembly meeting, just before a resolution urging the State Department to contest Israel’s visa policy was to be debated. Though the room was not full, Griffith reports that there were 250 in attendance to discuss the Modern Language Association’s Middle East policy. Griffith tells me that the picture was taken at about 3:15 p.m.

Two minutes before, Lee Skallerup, professor and author of the blog College Ready Writing, had tweeted this picture from a panel on the plight of adjunct instructors, what she called, with some justification, “the biggest issue facing” the language and literature teaching biz. Such low-paid instructors, who typically do not receive benefits, make up an ever increasing percentage of teaching faculty not only in language and literature but in higher education altogether. While 250 people considered the plight of a handful of U.S. academics denied entry to the West Bank, five scholars were in attendance to discuss a problem the MLA might do something about.