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Faculty pass a resolution against CARS proposals
by Miranda Neubauer
Senior Writer
News | 4/28/09
Posted online at 8:58 AM EST on 4/28/09
The faculty passed a resolution last Thursday against the Curriculum and Academic Restructuring Steering committee's recommendations to reorganize the African and Afro-American Studies department, the American Studies department and the Classical Studies department as interdepartmental programs, according to faculty and administrators who attended the meeting.
The faculty also rejected a proposal that would have enabled students to design their own general education requirements and voted to have an additional faculty meeting to discuss other parts of the CARS proposals this week before Provost Marty Krauss makes initial decisions on the report May 4.
The faculty meeting was closed to students so faculty could speak freely, Krauss explained Thursday. According to faculty attendees, the bulk of the meeting's discussion concerned the proposal regarding the three departments, with all three department chairs speaking out against the plans. Prof. Ann Koloski-Ostrow (CLAS) spoke first, followed by Prof. Stephen Whitfield (AMST) and Prof. Wellington Nyangoni (AAAS).
"I thought we should go on record as opposing the diminishing of those departments, Prof. Gordon Fellman (SOC) said on Sunday regarding the introduction of the resolution. Krauss said she thought the wording of that part of the resolution was ambiguous. "I'm not entirely sure what the thrust of that resolution was."
Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe said Friday the CARS committee would meet again this week and did not rule out changing the recommendations.
Jaffe said that the concerns expressed about each of the departments were somewhat different. "I think in all three cases the claim was made that this was a discipline; it's not really an interdisciplinary field," he said. "With respect to American Studies, there was discussion [that] it's much bigger than the other two in terms of the number of [student] majors and also the historical role played by the Brandeis American Studies department," he said. "With [AAAS], there was a lot of discussion about the symbolism and its historical origins in Ford Hall, and with respect to Classics there was a lot of discussion that at many of our peer institutions Classics is a department and not a program."
The faculty also rejected a proposal that would have enabled students to design their own general education requirements and voted to have an additional faculty meeting to discuss other parts of the CARS proposals this week before Provost Marty Krauss makes initial decisions on the report May 4.
The faculty meeting was closed to students so faculty could speak freely, Krauss explained Thursday. According to faculty attendees, the bulk of the meeting's discussion concerned the proposal regarding the three departments, with all three department chairs speaking out against the plans. Prof. Ann Koloski-Ostrow (CLAS) spoke first, followed by Prof. Stephen Whitfield (AMST) and Prof. Wellington Nyangoni (AAAS).
"I thought we should go on record as opposing the diminishing of those departments, Prof. Gordon Fellman (SOC) said on Sunday regarding the introduction of the resolution. Krauss said she thought the wording of that part of the resolution was ambiguous. "I'm not entirely sure what the thrust of that resolution was."
Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe said Friday the CARS committee would meet again this week and did not rule out changing the recommendations.
Jaffe said that the concerns expressed about each of the departments were somewhat different. "I think in all three cases the claim was made that this was a discipline; it's not really an interdisciplinary field," he said. "With respect to American Studies, there was discussion [that] it's much bigger than the other two in terms of the number of [student] majors and also the historical role played by the Brandeis American Studies department," he said. "With [AAAS], there was a lot of discussion about the symbolism and its historical origins in Ford Hall, and with respect to Classics there was a lot of discussion that at many of our peer institutions Classics is a department and not a program."
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