Mendele Personal Notices & Announcements November 5, 2010
To minimize wear and tear on the untershames, three requests: 1. Send time-sensitive notices well in advance. 2. Send material as plain text: no HTML, other coding, or attachments;and write MENDELE PERSONALS in the subject line. 3. Correspond directly with the person who or organization which has posted the notice, *not* with your ever-beleaguered untershames. __________________________________________________________ From: Barry Trachtenberg <[email protected]> Subject: Cuts at the University at Albany (SUNY) Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 10:41:15 -0400 Dear Colleagues, No doubt you have heard about the proposed cuts to the Humanities programs at the University at Albany. Below are my comments to the Faculty Senate (each speaker was given only three minutes) regarding the changes in Judaic Studies at the University over the past few years and how this new round of cuts will further diminish our offerings. Yours, Barry Trachtenberg ----------------------------------------- Lost in the current discussions about the cuts in the academic programs are the recent changes in Judaic Studies. Founded as a Department forty years ago this very month, Judaic Studies at UAlbany was a forerunner of the burst in Jewish Studies programs that has occurred over the past two decades. Now, more than one hundred and twenty-five Universities in North America and Canada offer Jewish Studies, and it is a field that is continually growing. I arrived to UAlbany in 2003 as one of the first faculty members whose line was to be paid through a public-private partnership, (a failed experiment that demonstrated how academic speech can be suppressed through such arrangements). I was the fifth member of a vibrant Department that offered classes in many realms of Jewish Studies. While we never had more than 20 majors at any given time, we often served annually more than one thousand students in our classes, many of whom saw Jewish Studies as a vital part of their education. Our recent external review from 2009 credited us as a national competitive program with a staff who is young and energetic but which lacks the non- replacement of departing faculty. Now, I am the sole full-time faculty member in Jewish Studies, and I, along with a Hebrew lecturer and a handful of adjunct instructors, have had our Department dissolved and we are now housed in History. We are in the process of suspending admission to the major.As part of my responsibility to oversee Judaic Studies soon to be officially a programI am to create an interdisciplinary major out of the faculty located across the University, following the model that exists at most other schools. Such a task was already going to prove difficult. Since the Judaic Studies Department was the site where those faculty with an interest in the topic were housed, there are only a few faculty at the University with either the training or the interest in mounting classes and making the long-term commitment to teaching them on a regular basis. Now, with the plan to cut the programs in Theater, Classics, Russian, Italian, and French, I fear that my job may be impossible. At least three of the five programs have faculty with an interest or clear affinity with Jewish Studies. Take the work of French Professor Brett Bowles, for instance, who works on antisemitism in French film. One could also point to Professor of Russian Henryk Baran, who researches the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. As well, faculty in the Theater Department are currently preparing a production of Dear Harvey, a play on the life and times of the civil rights activist Harvey Milk. The absence of these programs will be devastating to my efforts to rebuild the Judaic Studies major. Just as the creation of the Judaic Studies Department in 1970 augured future developments in the discipline, the decision to permit its attrition over the past few years has likewise presaged the recent news about the tragic cuts. I strongly suspect that had we not lost our faculty to retirements or to other Universities, we too would have been terminated, rather than only downsized. As the Faculty Senate weighs its decision regarding the termination of these five programs, please consider that the cuts impact constituencies far beyond those immediately affected. It is devastating and shameful that these programs are to be terminated. The effects of these ill-conceived decisions will extend far and wide throughout the University and degrade us all. Barry Trachtenberg Associate Professor of Hist ________________________________________________________________ Please do not use the "reply" key when writing to Mendele. Instead, direct your mail as follows: Material for Mendele Personal Notices & Announcements, i.e. announcements of events, commercial publications, requests to which responses should be sent exclusively to the request's author, etc., always in plain text (no HTML or the like) to: [email protected] (in the subject line write Mendele Personal) Material for postings to Mendele Yiddish literature and language, i.e. inquiries and comments of a non-commercial or publicity nature: [email protected] IMPORTANT: Please include your full name as you would like it to appear in your posting. No posting will appear without its author's name. Submissions to regular Mendele should not include personal email addresses, as responses will be posted for all to read. 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