Letter to the Editor: Classics faculty letter in support of Dean Robin Schulze

Editor’s note: This letter remains in the condition in which it was sent. 

We, the undersigned members of the faculty of the Department of Classics, wish herewith to express our support for Dean Robin Schulze’s efforts to find a way forward for the ongoing robust presence of humanities at the University at Buffalo. It is our understanding that a shrinking pool of college applicants, a post-Covid decline in student retention, a marked shift in parents’ expectations of their sons’ and daughters’ degree paths, among still other social factors, are collectively resulting in diminished enrollments in humanities programs nationwide, and that this national trend is leading to budget challenges in the College of Arts and Sciences. It is our opinion that Dean Schulze is currently acting in a way intended to best counter these unprecedented challenges. A subset of Classics graduate students has chosen publicly to assign a different interpretation to these actions, one that holds Dean Schulze to be complicit in any realization of these national trends in the College. We believe that interpretation to be untenable. We nevertheless embrace and unreservedly support rights to assembly and to free speech which is responsible and civil.

Roger D. Woodard, Interim Chair

Bradly A. Ault, Chair on leave

Alessandro Sebastiani, Director of Graduate Studies