Worries that university officials may be moving to eliminate the Department of Religious Studies seem awfully valid unless the College of Arts & Letters can provide more assurance to the contrary.
If the college’s leaders go ahead with the discipline’s deletion, they will be doing the university a capital injustice.
Since 1998, College of Arts & Letters officials and faculty have debated the merits of downgrading its Department of Religious Studies to a program. Formal suggestions for the motion were withdrawn in October.
Still, a recent replacement of the department’s chairperson and the reassignment of a prominent professor lead faculty and students within the department to believe college officials are moving ahead with the plan anyway. Wendy Wilkins, the college’s dean, denies that accusation, but her actions seem to suggest otherwise.
In December, the department’s two-year chairperson John Hinnant was unexpectedly replaced with Lewis Siegelbaum, who also overseas the college’s History Department and has no experience with religious studies.
While Wilkins refuses to comment on reasons for Hinnant’s demotion, she said her decision to put Siegelbaum in the position was based on his experience with departmental review, which religious studies is scheduled to undergo this year.
Like some involved with the religious studies program, it seems the best person to lead a departmental review would be one who is more familiar with the discipline.
Officials from the college also have reassigned veteran religious studies Professor John Grimes to the college’s Asian Studies Program. The college attempted to cut the Buddhism and Hinduism classes he teaches, but reconsidered after hearing community complaints.
MSU is not planning to review Grimes’ contract for next year.
These moves, which have caused worry over religious studies’ fate at MSU, are monstrous.
It is unfathomable a downgrade such as this would be discussed at a university where its president has continuously preached the need for students to have a more global understanding of the world.
The Department of Religious Studies is a key component in that mission.
The events of Sept. 11 showed us the importance of becoming more aware of the faith and economic situations throughout the world.
That morning showed people why there are issues that were overlooked in the past and can’t be passed up any longer. It is sad to see MSU try to close students’ eyes to these issues.
The need to trim costs across all university departments in harsh economic times is understandable. But the complete downgrade of a vital liberal arts department is not the answer.
Many students come to the university in hopes of pursuing a degree that hopefully will land them a multithousand-dollar-per-year job. But others come to learn. Those are the people who benefit from liberal arts courses.
Don’t let money get in the way of students’ minds benefiting from knowledge that professors such as Grimes have to share.
