Subject
Re: Memo from Dean Lewis @ Cornell (fwd)
From
Date
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Below, FYI, is the response of Dean Lewis to several people, including
Dmitri Nabokov, Don Harington, and Priscilla Meyer, who all wrote
regarding the Department of Russian Literature at Cornell. Dmitri Nabokov
forwarded me his copy. GD
>
> Subject: Russian Literature at Cornell
> Date: Sat, 05 Apr 1997 11:50:20 -0500
> From: "Arts & Sciences Dean's Office" <as_dean@cornell.edu>
>
> April 4, 1997
>
> MEMORANDUM
>
> To whom it may concern
>
> From: Philip Lewis, Dean
>
> Re: Russian Literature
>
> In recent weeks many correspondents have deluged me with
> remonstrations concerning the "abolition of Russian Literature" at
> Cornell and similar apocalyptic fates to which an ill-conceived
> "decision" of the Arts and Sciences administration is said to have
> consigned the study of Russian literature and culture here. I am
> responding with this memorandum in order to put on the record precisely
> what my colleagues and I have done and to dispel some of the rather
> loose and approximate notions of what we aim to do in the immediate
> future that seem to havebeen disseminated.
>
> On February 17, along with Associate Deans Kahn and Martin, I
> met with Gavriel Shapiro, Chair of the Department of Russian Literature,
> and Nancy Pollak, Director of Graduate Studies for the Graduate Field of
> Russian Literature, for the purpose of telling them that it is time to
> face up to the non-viability of the conventionally structured graduate
> program in Russian literature that we have had over the past two
> decades. During this time, we have generally been able to admit only
> one or two students per year. The tiny student contingent makes a
> seminar-based graduate program at best very tenuous--all the more so
> since the Russian language faculty in the Department of Modern Languages
> has typically judged the students in the literature program unqualified
> to serve as teaching assistants in language courses. Over the past two
> decades, the level of attrition of graduate students in the program has
> been high; owing in part to the decline in the study of Russian
> nationwide, the job prospects of those who manage to finish the Ph.D
> have been weak. Hence our conclusion that, before any further students
> are recruited for the Ph.D in Russian at Cornell, it would be necessary
> to redesign the program in a way that addresses the present realities.
> The solution that we can readily envisage within the existing framework
> of this college would be to re-establish it under the aegis of our
> highly successful graduate program in Comparative Literature. An
> alternative we also discussed would entail developing a
> cross-departmental program, modeled on the fields of German Studies and
> French Studies that we have established in recent years, with faculty
> from Modern Languages, History, Government, and the Eastern European and
> Slavic Studies area program. We asked Professors and Pollak to
> initiate discussions with their faculty colleagues that would lead to a
> transformation to be effectuated over the next 2-3 years.
>
> On that same day, after this meeting, I sent to Professor
> Shapiro, with copies to faculty in Russian Literature and in Comparative
> Literature, a letter in which I asserted that "we must and will preserve
> Russian literature in the Arts College curriculum." I took pains to
> situate what we had in mind -as a proposala request that the
> department faculty embark upon planning a change that we believe
> necessary in dialogue with the administration and with concerned faculty
> colleagues in the college. A request to begin planning in a context in
> which the aim has to be to develop a program that will eventually be
> smaller in size than what we have had for many years is not likely to be
> welcomed by those affected, and I have gone out of my way to express my
> sympathetic understanding for the faculty members whose cooperation in
> this simply unavoidable adjustment the college is seeking. The fact
> remains that its necessity, which is reinforced by weak undergraduate
> enrollments in Russian literature courses, can be understood and
> confronted objectively as a problem requiring a solution. It is
> important for responsible members of our academic community to reckon
> honestly with the status of the deans' position--conveyed as a proposal
> to plan, rather than a decision to abolish--and to represent that
> proposal in fair and accurate terms.
>
> In my letter to Professor Shapiro and his colleagues, I made it
> clear that the now foreseeable retirement of senior members in the
> present Department of Russian Literature would be an enabling component
> in the planning I asked them to undertake. One can use this natural
> course of events in the life of an academic program as an opportunity to
> construct something new and sustainable, or one can fall back on a
> defensive posture that expends energy in resisting evolution that is
> inevitable. As time passes, I hope the wisdom of the former course will
> prevail. Be that as it may, Arts and Sciences intends to maintain its
> commitment to both undergraduate and graduate education in Russian
> literature. This spring we are only beginning what will have to be a
> protracted dialogue about the programmatic shape our efforts to fulfill
> this commitment will take.
>
> ************************************************************
>
> Arts and Sciences Dean's Office
>
>
> send_email_to: as_dean@cornell.edu
> campus_address: 147 Goldwin Smith Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853
> campus_phone: 255-4146 (line for Philip Lewis, Dean and Paula Affeldt,
> Executive Assistant)
> fax: 255-8463
>
>
> ************************************************************
>
Dmitri Nabokov, Don Harington, and Priscilla Meyer, who all wrote
regarding the Department of Russian Literature at Cornell. Dmitri Nabokov
forwarded me his copy. GD
>
> Subject: Russian Literature at Cornell
> Date: Sat, 05 Apr 1997 11:50:20 -0500
> From: "Arts & Sciences Dean's Office" <as_dean@cornell.edu>
>
> April 4, 1997
>
> MEMORANDUM
>
> To whom it may concern
>
> From: Philip Lewis, Dean
>
> Re: Russian Literature
>
> In recent weeks many correspondents have deluged me with
> remonstrations concerning the "abolition of Russian Literature" at
> Cornell and similar apocalyptic fates to which an ill-conceived
> "decision" of the Arts and Sciences administration is said to have
> consigned the study of Russian literature and culture here. I am
> responding with this memorandum in order to put on the record precisely
> what my colleagues and I have done and to dispel some of the rather
> loose and approximate notions of what we aim to do in the immediate
> future that seem to havebeen disseminated.
>
> On February 17, along with Associate Deans Kahn and Martin, I
> met with Gavriel Shapiro, Chair of the Department of Russian Literature,
> and Nancy Pollak, Director of Graduate Studies for the Graduate Field of
> Russian Literature, for the purpose of telling them that it is time to
> face up to the non-viability of the conventionally structured graduate
> program in Russian literature that we have had over the past two
> decades. During this time, we have generally been able to admit only
> one or two students per year. The tiny student contingent makes a
> seminar-based graduate program at best very tenuous--all the more so
> since the Russian language faculty in the Department of Modern Languages
> has typically judged the students in the literature program unqualified
> to serve as teaching assistants in language courses. Over the past two
> decades, the level of attrition of graduate students in the program has
> been high; owing in part to the decline in the study of Russian
> nationwide, the job prospects of those who manage to finish the Ph.D
> have been weak. Hence our conclusion that, before any further students
> are recruited for the Ph.D in Russian at Cornell, it would be necessary
> to redesign the program in a way that addresses the present realities.
> The solution that we can readily envisage within the existing framework
> of this college would be to re-establish it under the aegis of our
> highly successful graduate program in Comparative Literature. An
> alternative we also discussed would entail developing a
> cross-departmental program, modeled on the fields of German Studies and
> French Studies that we have established in recent years, with faculty
> from Modern Languages, History, Government, and the Eastern European and
> Slavic Studies area program. We asked Professors and Pollak to
> initiate discussions with their faculty colleagues that would lead to a
> transformation to be effectuated over the next 2-3 years.
>
> On that same day, after this meeting, I sent to Professor
> Shapiro, with copies to faculty in Russian Literature and in Comparative
> Literature, a letter in which I asserted that "we must and will preserve
> Russian literature in the Arts College curriculum." I took pains to
> situate what we had in mind -as a proposala request that the
> department faculty embark upon planning a change that we believe
> necessary in dialogue with the administration and with concerned faculty
> colleagues in the college. A request to begin planning in a context in
> which the aim has to be to develop a program that will eventually be
> smaller in size than what we have had for many years is not likely to be
> welcomed by those affected, and I have gone out of my way to express my
> sympathetic understanding for the faculty members whose cooperation in
> this simply unavoidable adjustment the college is seeking. The fact
> remains that its necessity, which is reinforced by weak undergraduate
> enrollments in Russian literature courses, can be understood and
> confronted objectively as a problem requiring a solution. It is
> important for responsible members of our academic community to reckon
> honestly with the status of the deans' position--conveyed as a proposal
> to plan, rather than a decision to abolish--and to represent that
> proposal in fair and accurate terms.
>
> In my letter to Professor Shapiro and his colleagues, I made it
> clear that the now foreseeable retirement of senior members in the
> present Department of Russian Literature would be an enabling component
> in the planning I asked them to undertake. One can use this natural
> course of events in the life of an academic program as an opportunity to
> construct something new and sustainable, or one can fall back on a
> defensive posture that expends energy in resisting evolution that is
> inevitable. As time passes, I hope the wisdom of the former course will
> prevail. Be that as it may, Arts and Sciences intends to maintain its
> commitment to both undergraduate and graduate education in Russian
> literature. This spring we are only beginning what will have to be a
> protracted dialogue about the programmatic shape our efforts to fulfill
> this commitment will take.
>
> ************************************************************
>
> Arts and Sciences Dean's Office
>
>
> send_email_to: as_dean@cornell.edu
> campus_address: 147 Goldwin Smith Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853
> campus_phone: 255-4146 (line for Philip Lewis, Dean and Paula Affeldt,
> Executive Assistant)
> fax: 255-8463
>
>
> ************************************************************
>