Paula M. Krebs, the executive director of the Modern Language Association since summer 2017, has informed the Executive Council that she plans to step down in 2027 after ten years with the organization. The Executive Council will begin the search for Krebs’s successor in the coming weeks with the help of an experienced search firm and aims to have a new executive director in place by the time of her departure.
“As a first-generation college student, I’ve always had a bit of an outsider perspective, and this organization welcomed that, allowing me to take some risks and try some new things,” said Krebs. “But the biggest opportunities have been made possible by the amazing staff of the MLA. Every member of our staff works to support teaching and research in language, literature, writing, and culture and to support the humanities in our society. It has been an honor to work with them, with the Executive Council, and with our members to help to shape the ways we serve and expand our membership and promote the humanities.”
Krebs has led the MLA through a period of significant evolution, guiding the organization as it strategized to respond to the impact of new technologies, the COVID-19 pandemic, and legislative challenges to higher education.
Throughout her tenure, Krebs has prioritized advocating for the humanities. In May 2025, the MLA, along with the American Council of Learned Societies and the American Historical Association, filed a lawsuit seeking to reverse actions taken to devastate the National Endowment for the Humanities, including the elimination of grant programs, staff, and entire divisions and programs. “In the face of these unprecedented and destructive cuts,” Krebs argued, “humanities leaders must fight back together.” Krebs has dedicated herself to documenting the impact of the grant cancellations on members and constituents and to raising funds for the association’s legal expenses. The MLA has also created events and shared resources focused on collective action, academic freedom, legislative threats to higher education, teaching in times of crisis, and more, equipping educators with the tools necessary to navigate a challenging political landscape. Krebs has spoken out in op-eds and with lawmakers on behalf of languages, literature, and the humanities and served from March 2023 to March 2026 as the president of the National Humanities Alliance.
“For the past decade, Paula Krebs has been a superb leader of the MLA,” said Catharine Stimpson, former president of the MLA and current trustee. “She has confronted myriad challenges—financial, cultural, and political. She has responded to them with keen respect for all MLA members and their needs, tireless work, courage, a collaborative spirit, and the capacity to translate new ideas into strong programs. The MLA and all of the humanities owe her an incalculable debt.”
Under Krebs’s leadership, the MLA’s publication program has been especially forward-thinking, building out the newly launched MLA International Bibliography with Full Text and funding an information literacy prize in partnership with EBSCO as well as initiating a partnership with Cambridge University Press to publish the MLA’s premier journal, PMLA. The association also launched MLA Handbook Plus, the first digital subscription resource for MLA style, which provides students access through their institution to the text of the MLA Handbook and a series of classroom guides on timely topics, like the MLA Guide to Digital Literacy. Krebs’s tenure also saw the publication of Manual MLA, the MLA’s first Spanish adaptation of the MLA Handbook, and the receipt of a major gift from Southern Methodist University’s Project Poëtica to fully fund a series of poetry translations from a diverse range of less commonly taught world languages.
In 2018, Krebs urged departments to move away from hosting interviews at the MLA Annual Convention to make the interview process more equitable and create a more welcoming environment at the meeting. Under her guidance, the MLA transformed the interview center into the Professional Development Hub, offering microworkshops, discussion groups, and mentoring, and made sessions on advocating for the humanities a mainstay of the convention program. Krebs has led the MLA in expanding its events offerings and taking advantage of evolving technology to provide professional development programming for members at all career stages, creating year-round webinars and workshops on topics from AI to academic freedom. She has worked to cement the MLA’s relationship with the College Language Association and to make the MLA a more welcoming place for scholars from marginalized groups. During her tenure, the leadership development and departmental advocacy work of the Association of Departments of English and Association of Language Departments became more integrated into the broader MLA as MLA Academic Program Services (MAPS), which now serves a wider range of humanities programs.
Under Krebs’s direction, the MLA has also expanded its grant and award programs, offering new grants to improve the recruitment, retention, or career readiness of undergraduate students; fellowships that allow graduate students to pursue research and learning opportunities beyond their immediate community; and prizes that honor scholarship on Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and their diasporas.
“In the twenty years that I’ve known Paula Krebs,” said Herman Beavers, 2025–26 president of the MLA, “I’ve come to know her as a champion of inclusion and equity; she has always walked the walk. Over the course of her time as executive director of the MLA, she has been a tireless advocate, not only for the association’s mission and values but in defense of the humanities as well. She has logged tens of thousands of miles on behalf of the MLA and its members. We are deeply in her debt and she will be greatly missed.”
As developments in technology and generative AI have disrupted higher education over the last several years, Krebs has stressed the need for the MLA to respond effectively to these challenges by providing guidance from members to members. The organization established the MLA Task Force on AI in Research and Teaching and the MLA Task Force on World Languages and Generative AI with the goal of encouraging critical engagement with AI literacy, developing resources to support educators and students, and advocating on behalf of higher education with policymakers. The MLA’s influential Student Guide to AI Literacy and statements on AI agents and AI and assessment have shaped the public conversation about education technologies in the humanities.
In addition to cementing the MLA’s place as a leading advocate for the humanities, Krebs has made dedicated efforts to build connections across communities of scholars. As liaison to the Committee on Community Colleges, Krebs has led efforts to make the MLA a welcoming place for scholars at access-oriented institutions (AOIs). In 2019, with support from the Mellon Foundation, Krebs launched the MLA Institutes on Reading and Writing Pedagogy to improve the teaching at AOIs by offering training to graduate students and early-career instructors. She has also led the development of the MLA’s Strategic Partnership Network, bringing together institutions with a proven commitment to the humanities with the aim of building a sustainable foundation for the future.
Before becoming the executive director of the MLA, Krebs was the dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Bridgewater State University, special assistant to the president for external relations at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, an American Council on Education (ACE) Fellow in the president’s office of the University of Massachusetts, and a professor and department chair at Wheaton. Krebs received her PhD from Indiana University, where she specialized in Victorian literature and culture. Prior to her directorship, Krebs was a member of the MLA Executive Council from 2013 to 2017, a member of the Nominating Committee, and a member of the executive committee of the Association of Departments of English.