There was a straw poll of no confidence in the chancellor and provost in the faculty senate yesterday. Only 5 voted that they would be ready to vote yes on this (with 20 something voting that they would not). I was listening to the meeting on my computer, am not on the senate now. So that's a non-starter. The senate is institutionally weak anyway. We need to unionize. The Senate is set up to be cooperative with the administration, without any real power, since the KBOR (board of Regents) can set policy unilaterally and give whatever powers it wants to the CEO (the chancellor), including apparently the power to suspend tenure even without declaring a financial exigency.
Latin American studies will be merged into International Program or Global Studies, or whatever, and thus lose its distinctive mission and identity. This is obviously very bad for Hispanism here, since even though I am personally not a Latin Americanist, I know that Spanish departments thrive when there are strong Latin American interdisciplinary programs. Our own department is a strong component of Lat Am studies, with a critical mass of the faculty. It would be hard to apply for Title VI funds next time around, or recruit faculty to the dept. All humanities research is interdisciplinary now...
1 comment:
So sorry about this. We sent a letter, but LASA should.
The first person I ever met from KU was in LAS, studying primate cities. He was smart, which gave a good impression of the place. This was long ago. Unfortunate more students like that won't be produced, this is basically the end of LAS there and it is quite sad
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