The 1988 report by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is noted for its analysis of the current US crisis in the humanities & the decline in enrollments in these disciplines by college students. The report praises the NEH for supposedly restimulating interest in the humanities, reiterates the call for disseminating culture through study of the humanities, & attacks academia for overspecialization & politicization. The accuracy of the last charge reflects conflicts between the educational & cultural mission of the humanities & the dynamics of professionalism. Political forces are comprised of ideologically distinct scholars who support either a cultural, modernist, or conservative position, or a postmodern/radical deconstructionist/Marxist/feminist/new historicist position. An examination of the shift in Shakespeare studies in high bourgeois Victorian culture literate society to one of passive, decadent culture consumers implicates the negative effects of positivism. J. Sadler