Mills College, claiming financial emergency, will cease to be a liberal arts college

The College is proposing to fire at least eight tenured faculty, including its two philosophy faculty, and eliminate the philosophy program.  (Thanks to Dean Rowan for the pointer.)

Let's assume the financial crisis is real, and there really is a $9 million deficit.  If a school really is a liberal arts college, and not a pretender to that status, then it offers philosophy.  Full stop.  If it chooses to eliminate philosophy, then whatever it is, it is not a liberal arts college.  (Eliminating these two faculty positions, by the way, is barely going to make a dent in the deficit, but that to one side.)

Philosopher Marc Joseph, one of two tenured faculty at risk now of losing his livelihood, writes:

The Board of Trustees (BOT) announced last month that it had declared a financial state of emergency and had given itself power inter alia to fire tenured professors. It did not declare what the AAUP calls a state of exigency; as I understand it, a state of exigency basically means that the building is on fire, and so you can start throwing people out the window. The BOT defines a state of emergency in operational terms, saying what it can do but not coming out and saying what justifies those powers, except in vague terms. In particular, the BOT doesn’t want to say that we’re on fire; our gates are open and we continue to educate our students successfully. 

When the BOT made its first announcement Jay and I saw the handwriting on the wall, and we figured that one of us had taught his last class at Mills. But we were stunned when we found both our names on the list of proscription, meaning the end of the philosophy program.

The whole process has been soul crushing. We mourn the possible end of our careers, we are alarmed and anxious about the ease with which Mills has trampled our tenure rights, and we are sad for our students and alumnae, many of whom have reached out and expressed their gratitude for what they learned in our classes and, more generally, what they learned by doing philosophy. 

Anyone who is interested may contact the chair of the BOT, Ms. Katie Sanborn, at [email protected], the complete BOT at [email protected], President Beth Hillman at [email protected], and Provost Chinyere Oparah at [email protected] They can also sign the petition started by Maja Sidzinska.