Dear Colleagues,
What follows is a Presidential Letter. It has not been brought to the Board for approval and does not constitute policy. This venue exists for me, as President, to raise matters of concern with our membership. Though I have consulted with colleagues, I take sole responsibility for the opinions expressed below.
The system of higher education and with it the field of Classics in the United States is currently undergoing unprecedented attacks from the federal government. (Our colleagues in Canada have their own difficulties, some a result of the threats we are currently facing; but I won’t have time to address the situation in Canada here). Some of the most direct actions against higher education are financial: beginning with the sciences, the administration of President Trump has cancelled, by executive order, billions of dollars in grants distributed by the NIH, the NSF, and now, the NEH. In many cases funds that have already been appropriated by Congress have been “frozen,” in some instances stopping payment on work that has already been done.
Members of the SCS should also know that we have been directly affected by these cuts. We have one grant line (and thankfully only one) from the NEH, which helps to support our annual fellow to the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. The status of that grant is now listed on the NEH website as “Administrative Termination.” The NEH still owes us about $40K for work already done by this year’s fellow, and the funding for next year’s fellow has been, apparently, terminated. For the short term, the SCS has stepped up and, working with the Friends of the TLL, is guaranteeing funding for this year’s fellow. But the future of this fellowship is currently uncertain. Many classics-directed programs at individual institutions that rely on federal funds have also been cut.
Recently, the ACLS, the AHA, and the MLA have filed a federal lawsuit to oppose “The Illegal Dismantling of the National Endowment for the Humanities.” The AHA has publicly asked that interested individuals make donations to their advocacy fund, and SCS members may wish to consider doing so. You can find a link here.
In this context it is important to know that the SCS is neither a large nor a wealthy organization. Our members (and those of other societies) sometimes assume that we have a vast pile of extra funds at our disposal. This is not the case; in fact, we have been running operating deficits for a number of years, and the current Board and Executive Director Zach Slates are working hard to close that deficit. Though we may object to any number of actions of the federal government, we do not have the resources to launch independent lawsuits.
Other actions, though perhaps addressed less directly to our discipline, are even more concerning. President Trump has also taken steps that threaten the intellectual independence that is central to higher education. His administration has demanded unprecedented oversight over departments and programs in a number of prominent universities. Most visibly, he has stopped payment on over $2 billion in funding to Harvard University, and has threatened to cancel their tax-exempt status, because Harvard refused to concede to the federal administration’s demands. Those demands would have fundamentally undermined academic freedom.
Perhaps most egregious of all, the federal government revoked the visa status of over 1,000 foreign students who were in the United States on fully legal student visas, revoking many without any discernible cause, and many without any notification. The administration has since re-instated the visa statuses of some of these students, though it remains uncertain how many, or for what reasons. I have heard from colleagues that their own students and colleagues have been directly affected.
In my first months as President of the SCS, I have been hesitant to issue statements or sign on to other societies’ statements about many of these issues. We have signed on to the statement of the National Humanities Alliance opposing cuts to the NEH. And we signed on to the recent statement of the AAC&U, “A Call for Constructive Engagement.” But in general I have taken direction from our Board of Directors, who have wished to spend more of our time and energy finding ways to support our members than signing on to statements that, to be blunt, may have little impact. This has led to several good results: an updated page of resources for our members, as well as a series of zoom events to discuss strategies going forward. (We are holding a zoom meeting for department chairs on 5/20.) We have also sought to improve communication with our affiliate groups, many of whom represent our members in threatened minority communities.
I believe, however, that we are reaching a crisis point. It has become clear that if our discipline and the academy are going to survive, we will have to find ways to work in concert against the onslaught of attacks, many of questionable legality, from the federal government. This will not be easy; as always, our rate of agreement will never be 100%. But I would urge our members to recognize the seriousness of these attacks, and to work together in areas where we have broad agreement.
To date, it appears that the core of resistance will need to be professional societies, rather than individual colleges and universities. University presidents, by and large, have preferred to keep their heads down. The AAUP has been stellar in its response, as has the ACLS (led by our colleague Joy Connolly). I hope that the SCS will, as an institution, stand up to fight to make our profession more welcoming, equitable, and accessible to students and scholars of every status, background, or identity group; and that we, as institutional members and individuals will be willing to speak out against egregious abuses of due process and will champion the right to free speech.
Beyond that, I would like to encourage two modes of action that we can take locally. First, I believe that we all – and especially those with tenure – need to work within our colleges and universities to advocate for the principle of academic freedom. We must be free to research and teach the subjects that we see as important and ensure that our colleagues not be subject to penalties for taking on topics that are currently politically unpopular. We can also exert pressure on our university administrations to oppose the most destructive of the current attacks and encourage them to form alliances with other university administrations in these efforts. And second, we can support our immediate colleagues and students. If not at immediate risk ourselves, each of us knows someone who is currently at risk. We should ask our colleagues and students how our institution or department can best support them, and then offer that support in whatever way we can.
This is a moment of crisis; I believe we will make it through together.
Kirk Ormand
President, SCS
