A philosopher at UNLV writes:
So, it looks like elimination of the entire Philosophy Dept. is now off the table at UNLV--largely thanks to the campaign waged by readers of the Leiter Reports. Within the current proposal, the College is being asked for a significantly lower amount of cuts, so now only the untenured members of the Dept. would be terminated.... Women's Studies is still up for elimination entirely, and now the untenured members of Anthro and Sociology are also slated for termination.
This is certainly welcome news, though the wholesale termination of tenure-stream faculty in just three departments is also rather draconian (philosophy has only one untenured faculty member, who is on track to get tenure). Surely it would make more sense to cut untenured faculty not on track to get tenure across all fields, rather than pick just three fields where the untenured faculty may be (or in the case of philosophy, are in fact) very good.
UPDATE: An important clarification from the UNLV Chair of Philosophy:
While a new proposal by the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at UNLV lays out budget cuts that do not include the elimination of the entire philosophy department, this proposal is still at the preliminary stage. Things look much better for Philosophy at UNLV than they did last week. But no one knows what will happen to the Philosophy Department or any other department at UNLV until the Nevada legislature finishes its session this summer.
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