Mission and Strategic Priorities

Our Mission

A leading advocate for the humanities, the Modern Language Association promotes the study, teaching, and understanding of languages, literatures, and culture.

Our Values

This is an especially important time for the MLA to define its values. The values on which the MLA bases its decision-making are

Equity: The MLA supports and encourages impartiality, fairness, and justice throughout the humanities ecosystem.

Inclusion: The MLA recognizes that all members should feel a sense of belonging within the association—that they are accepted, supported, and valued in word and in actions and that the association’s resources are accessible to them.

Advocacy: The MLA champions intellectual freedom; fair working conditions; and the value of scholarship in, pedagogy of, and public engagement with the humanities.

Strategic Priorities

Through a series of surveys and other methods, we reached out to all MLA members to find out what you valued about the association and where you hoped to see it go. The resulting strategic priorities reflect a vision of the MLA as a humanities leader. They assert our commitment to advocating for participation in, funding for, and public recognition of the study and teaching of languages, literatures, and cultures.

Priority 1: Broaden the reach of the MLA and expand its leadership role in promoting the value of the humanities.

The MLA will expand its resources that foster public engagement with the humanities, help humanities practitioners do their work, and increase understanding about the role of humanities education in cultivating critical thinking and equity-minded communities.

We will increase awareness of the association and the members behind it. We will broaden engagement with the association by offering opportunities for those beyond the current membership to see a place for themselves in the MLA.

Priority 2: Develop mechanisms that help us address the decline of humanities enrollments and funding.

The MLA will provide resources that enable users to gather and interpret local, national, and regional data in order to better advocate for their departments and adapt their curricula to meet the needs of their constituencies. We will enhance our workshop offerings to help departments expand curricula to appeal to diverse student populations; build coalitions with other departments; and improve recruitment, retention, and career readiness for students of all backgrounds.

Priority 3: Expand services and initiatives that foster the improvement of working conditions.

Recognizing the increasing precarity of those teaching and doing research in MLA fields, the MLA will work to find meaningful, effective ways to address and help improve working conditions for tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty members and graduate students. We will seek to ensure that contingent and precarious constituencies feel included in and served by the association. We will establish and extend partnerships with labor advocacy groups, expand our resources about working conditions, and increase awareness of our efforts.