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Russian Department at Cornell (fwd)
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Date: Mon, 31 Mar 1997 16:02:45 -0500 (EST)
From: Gavriel Shapiro <gs33@cornell.edu>
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@UCSBVM.ucsb.edu>
Subject: Russian Department at Cornell
In light of Dean Lewis's response, I decided to make public his letter of
February 17 and let the Nabokov Forum participants decide for themselves how
accurate my earlier report on the situation was. Here is the text of Dean
Lewis's letter which he sent me that very day after meeting with Nancy
Pollak and myself. Also present at the meeting were the two Associate
Deans, Peter Kahn and Carolyn (Biddy) Martin.
Dear Gavriel:
Pursuant to our meeting with you and Nancy Pollak this morning, I write to
put on the record the basic points Peter, Biddy and I tried to convey to you.
As I explained, in our conversations with Dean Cohen of the Graduate School
over the past year and a half, we have been struggling to determine how the
college and graduate school should deal with programs such as yours that
appear to us to be functioning below the minimum critical mass that makes
for viable long-term operation. In the stark light of the need for a new
and severe financial retrenchment that the endowed units at Cornell will
face in 1999-2000, we have had to conclude that it no longer makes sense for
us to pretend that we can go on sustaining the kind of graduate program in
Russian literature we have had over the years when our resources allow us to
admit, on average, no more than a couple of students per year. In asking
how the Ph.D. program in Russian should be organized once we face honestly
the fact that we cannot justify either the number of faculty or the number
of TAs we have kept in your department, we have to the conclusion that we
should enter without delay into a period of transition. Its immediate
objective will be, of course, to phase out the present graduate program in a
manner that meets the needs of the students now enrolled in it. At the same
time, we will need to undertake a rethinking and reorganization of the way
we provide for a Ph.D. in Russian literature at Cornell. For the time
being, our vision of the administrative future involves situating the Ph.D.
in Russian within Comparative Literature and calling upon the Department of
Comparative Literature to assume responsibility for what heretofore been
lodged in your department.
The terms under which this transformation can be effectuated during the next
2-3 years will have to be determined in discussions with you and your
colleagues in Comparative Literature. We propose to initiate such
conversations this spring and to pursue them to a conclusive point during
the next two academic years. We realize that we may encounter many
difficulties as we try to work this out. However, we have made an explicit
decision to ask you to join us in planning for such a change rather than to
pursue a more conventional, top-down course, which would entail presenting
you with our agenda showing exactly when and how all the moves would be
made. The immediate question is, of course, what steps we should take this
spring to allow for the process of change to begin. It seems to us that no
more graduate students should be brought into your Ph.D. program until we
are in a position to inform applicants about the shape and status it will
have in the future. It also seems to us that we should ask the senior
members of your department, Professors Gibian, Carden, and Senderovich, to
enter into discussions with the college administration about their
retirement plans. We cannot force any particular scenario upon any of them,
but it is at least possible that, with each of them, we can come to an
agreement during the next year or so about their plans for the future. If
the attempt to do so is successful, it will be easier for us to develop a
timetable for a long-term relocation of the positions you and Nancy Pollak
hold in Comparative Literature. If it is not successful, we will work with
the faculty of the department, as a group, to come up with a suitable
alternative arrangement for the next few years.
In conclusion, let me say that we realize that the task of putting a
positive spin on efforts that inevitably have the feel of "downsizing" isn't
easy, but we do think it is possible. We must and will preserve Russian
literature in the Arts College curriculum, and we will do our best to make
it possible for those who are teaching it to have a viable framework for the
study of Russian and Comparative literature at the advanced level. It is
necessary for us to prevail on you and many other faculties in the college
to reckon with the reality of contracting resources, but just as necessary
too for all of us to convert necessity into opportunities for rethinking our
programs creatively.
Sincerely,
Philip Lewis
Dean
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 1997 16:02:45 -0500 (EST)
From: Gavriel Shapiro <gs33@cornell.edu>
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@UCSBVM.ucsb.edu>
Subject: Russian Department at Cornell
In light of Dean Lewis's response, I decided to make public his letter of
February 17 and let the Nabokov Forum participants decide for themselves how
accurate my earlier report on the situation was. Here is the text of Dean
Lewis's letter which he sent me that very day after meeting with Nancy
Pollak and myself. Also present at the meeting were the two Associate
Deans, Peter Kahn and Carolyn (Biddy) Martin.
Dear Gavriel:
Pursuant to our meeting with you and Nancy Pollak this morning, I write to
put on the record the basic points Peter, Biddy and I tried to convey to you.
As I explained, in our conversations with Dean Cohen of the Graduate School
over the past year and a half, we have been struggling to determine how the
college and graduate school should deal with programs such as yours that
appear to us to be functioning below the minimum critical mass that makes
for viable long-term operation. In the stark light of the need for a new
and severe financial retrenchment that the endowed units at Cornell will
face in 1999-2000, we have had to conclude that it no longer makes sense for
us to pretend that we can go on sustaining the kind of graduate program in
Russian literature we have had over the years when our resources allow us to
admit, on average, no more than a couple of students per year. In asking
how the Ph.D. program in Russian should be organized once we face honestly
the fact that we cannot justify either the number of faculty or the number
of TAs we have kept in your department, we have to the conclusion that we
should enter without delay into a period of transition. Its immediate
objective will be, of course, to phase out the present graduate program in a
manner that meets the needs of the students now enrolled in it. At the same
time, we will need to undertake a rethinking and reorganization of the way
we provide for a Ph.D. in Russian literature at Cornell. For the time
being, our vision of the administrative future involves situating the Ph.D.
in Russian within Comparative Literature and calling upon the Department of
Comparative Literature to assume responsibility for what heretofore been
lodged in your department.
The terms under which this transformation can be effectuated during the next
2-3 years will have to be determined in discussions with you and your
colleagues in Comparative Literature. We propose to initiate such
conversations this spring and to pursue them to a conclusive point during
the next two academic years. We realize that we may encounter many
difficulties as we try to work this out. However, we have made an explicit
decision to ask you to join us in planning for such a change rather than to
pursue a more conventional, top-down course, which would entail presenting
you with our agenda showing exactly when and how all the moves would be
made. The immediate question is, of course, what steps we should take this
spring to allow for the process of change to begin. It seems to us that no
more graduate students should be brought into your Ph.D. program until we
are in a position to inform applicants about the shape and status it will
have in the future. It also seems to us that we should ask the senior
members of your department, Professors Gibian, Carden, and Senderovich, to
enter into discussions with the college administration about their
retirement plans. We cannot force any particular scenario upon any of them,
but it is at least possible that, with each of them, we can come to an
agreement during the next year or so about their plans for the future. If
the attempt to do so is successful, it will be easier for us to develop a
timetable for a long-term relocation of the positions you and Nancy Pollak
hold in Comparative Literature. If it is not successful, we will work with
the faculty of the department, as a group, to come up with a suitable
alternative arrangement for the next few years.
In conclusion, let me say that we realize that the task of putting a
positive spin on efforts that inevitably have the feel of "downsizing" isn't
easy, but we do think it is possible. We must and will preserve Russian
literature in the Arts College curriculum, and we will do our best to make
it possible for those who are teaching it to have a viable framework for the
study of Russian and Comparative literature at the advanced level. It is
necessary for us to prevail on you and many other faculties in the college
to reckon with the reality of contracting resources, but just as necessary
too for all of us to convert necessity into opportunities for rethinking our
programs creatively.
Sincerely,
Philip Lewis
Dean