A scholar at Albany writes:
I am writing from the Siege of Albany to thank you and to ask for your assistance.
We in the Albany foreign language community would like to thank you for publicizing our crisis and for the kind comments you made in response to efforts to eliminate many of the foreign language programs here. Your comments were widely distributed and were gratefully received at a very difficult moment for us. Perhaps more importantly, however, your blog has been of considerable help to us as we try to organize a defense against the administration's actions. The postings on the disasters that have hit Middlesex, Louisiana, the Penn State system, and so forth, have been a primary source of information for us. Although Philosophy here has not yet been immediately targeted (more cuts are, however, planned), the arguments used to attack the foreign language departments would also clearly undermine the survival of Philosophy–especially considering that in certain regards (enrollments, majors, student/faculty ratios) Philosophy is even more exposed than several of the beleaguered Language programs.
The national–and international–response to our crisis has emphasized awareness that the cuts proposed at SUNY Albany present us not just with the elimination or reduction of individual departments, but the whole disposal of "unprofitable" disciplines, and thus is a direct threat to standards of acceptable behavior in universities. It is felt that if a research university like Albany can eliminate so many core Humanities programs in favor of departments with maximum enrollments, university administrators everywhere will feel that it is acceptable to ditch any academic bathtub that doesn't provide it's own revenue source and still claim to be a "university" in good standing.
For this reason, several national organizations have rallied to aid in our defense.
It is already quite apparent that the surface arguments (mostly "economic" in nature, in a very constrained and adventitious sense of that term) presented by the administration are highly inconsistent, and are being presented (with some embarrassment) as a public cover for arguments the administration would prefer not to discuss with the faculty at large (and which we have every reason to suspect concern the imposition of corporatist criteria for the evaluation of intellectual work). The affected faculty, in the meantime, are being deliberately excluded from the processes of consultation (as they have been from the beginning, when the Dean excluded any member of the targeted language programs from being represented on the budgetary committees), and are being kept in the dark about their fates–the administration remains resolutely silent on termination dates for most of those involved, while the registrars and student advisors have been instructed to act in reference to specific dates when those faculty will no longer be available. It is clear that the entire exercise was carefully planned in advance to force the cuts through and to disable those affected from mounting a defense, largely by preventing them from knowing what was happening until the cuts were in effect.
Somewhat to our surprise, however, faculty from other departments have responded with outrage and with a strong sense that any university worth respecting (and certainly any university deserving public support) must sustain core Humanities programs, even at a loss, in order to justify its standing as an intellectual community, lest it dwindle into the provincial backwater of a job-training institute. Several members of the Philosophy Department have been very articulate about the interdependency of the various humanities (and for that matter, social sciences) for both teaching and research, and their inability to pursue their own work without support for the languages used in their discipline.
Without a head count, we cannot yet claim a consensus, but there is here a widespread feeling among the faculty that the burdens of this difficult fiscal period should be widely shared, so that the breadth and integrity of the university could be preserved, to be revived when the economy returns to health. Faculty outside the affected programs have even floated their willingness to share a general pay-cut (similar to those in California) to help the targeted departments survive–an unbelievably generous and gracious act in defense of the Humanities, and specifically in defense of our shared openness to foreign language communities worldwide.
The administration argues, however, that a generalized cut would, in the words of our President, George M. Philip, "only lead to mediocrity", and insists that the cuts be concentrated on programs "not central to our mission." (No discussion of that "mission", I need not tell you, is permitted: definition of "mission" is evidently a decanal privilege, and just as evidently, concerns future sources of corporate revenue rather than the educational needs of young people in our rapidly diversifying world.) Our request addresses the history of this "build to strength" argument (known in our world as "sauve qui peut"). At this point, it would be most helpful to hear from your readership historical examples of specific universities having responded to financial difficulties with either (broadly speaking) shared acceptance of temporary burdens, or by "surgical" cuts that permanently changed the universities' research and teaching profile.
How have these universities fared in the aftermath? Has the sharing of financial burdens university-wide indeed hindered later development of the university? Have focused cuts damaged or healed ailing institutions? Have the reasons for drastic changes proposed at the time of crisis proven to be accurate in light of later developments?
To respond to the administration's challenges, we need actual historical examples of what worked and what didn't, in order to make a plausible case for alternative responses to the local crisis. To get the ball rolling I will cite one example familiar to me: the University of Chicago responded to financial difficulties during the 1970's by instituting a "Harper Fellows" program to hire junior faculty on 3-year contracts instead of offering tenure track positions. The program was frankly exploitative of the horrid academic job market (as was admitted to me sotto voce by faculty members embarrassed that the University had resorted to such things), but had the effect of sharing reduced faculty salaries across departments rather than concentrating cuts in vulnerable areas. As a result, the University preserved weaker (not weak, weaker) departments at the time (say, French, German) which thus survived and have been rebuilt since to considerable distinction. I can't imagine Chicago would in any way have been a "stronger" university if it had "built to strength" back then and eliminated departments which would go on later to earn national reputations. Nor would its claims to be an international university pass the laugh test without it's language programs.
We are deeply concerned (especially in light of the history of university reform in Australia) that the corporatist strategy of "building to strength" would be suicidal for a state university like any of the SUNY institutions, compelling them to "compete" in highly expensive, high profiles disciplines against enormously better funded institutions in a vain and futile attempt to "move up" on some national listing of "top departments"–devastating the entire breadth of our intellectual community while vainly competing for more grants against Harvard and Hopkins. Overlooked in this catastrophe is the precedent of state universities that have successfully sought distinction in disciplines that, while not necessarily being high income earners, cost (relatively) little to enter and participate in (in Philosophy: think Rutgers, think Pittsburgh). The only nationally "distinguished" program at Albany, Public Administration, would be a perfect example of what a school with our resources could do. But examples of how universities have successfully responded to crises without self-immolation could be priceless, perhaps even decisive, for us right now.
Your blog has become, perhaps by default but certainly by virtue, a rallying post for the defense of the Humanities in our benighted age. For this we thank you.
Comments are open; I hope readers will have examples to share for the benefit of the Albany faculty trying to persuade their Administration of cost-saving measures that do not involve destruction of the university, and of the humanities in particular.
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