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March 28, 2024

Appointment of new chair stuns Humanities Center

By ROLLIN HU | March 2, 2017

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COURTESY OF ROLLIN HU

For the last six months, the Humanities Center (HC) has defended its right to exist as a department. In January, Dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences (KSAS) Beverly Wendland announced that the University would not close the Center.

On Monday, Feb. 27, Wendland sent out another email clarifying the next steps.

The email announced the creation of an interim advisory board to redefine the Center’s academic foci, rename the Center and establish a possible undergraduate minor. This advisory board will be led by Professor Gabrielle Spiegel, who is jointly appointed in the HC and the history department.

Professor Hent de Vries will no longer serve as director of the HC. Wendland’s email outlined the search for a new faculty member to potentially become chair of the department.

Betsy Bryan, a professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies and vice dean of humanities and social sciences, will serve as interim chair as of Wednesday. The Center’s students and faculty were unaware of the upcoming changes prior to Wendland’s University-wide email.

Katherine Boyce-Jacino, a Ph.D. student in the HC, who is in her seventh and final year spoke about the way in which both students and faculty were blindsided by the announcement.

“This was totally unexpected. As far as we know none of the faculty knew this was happening,” she said. “There were no emails to the department specifically. None of the graduate students knew.”

Ben Gillespie, a fifth-year Ph.D. student at the Center, was especially shocked that the interim chair has had no prior affiliation with the Center.

“It’s very strange. It’s almost unheard of to have an outside chair brought in,” he said, “It’s only in extreme circumstances, when there are massive conflicts.”

They both stressed how bringing in a new chair in the middle of semester disrupts many of the administrative functions of the Center, which includes helping graduate students plan their fellowships, summer funding and dissertations.

“We don’t understand. If there was supposed to be this open dialogue to produce the best plan for the department, why didn’t our faculty know about it,” Gillespie said. “If they wanted to bring an outside chair, they should run it by other faculty members.”

Boyce-Jacino agreed, feeling that there was not enough dialogue between the administration and the members of the Center.

“I think the way the email frames it makes it seem like it’s the product of a long deliberation, extensive conversations with everybody,” Boyce-Jacino said. “Maybe that is true on some level, but in terms of interacting with the actual department and the students and the faculty, that clearly hasn’t happened and that is very concerning to us.”

Former director of the Center, Hent de Vries, was made aware of the upcoming changes to the department last Friday in a discussion with Wendland and Bryan. Although he discussed his respect for Bryan, he felt the decision of making her interim chair to be excessive and had not expected the Dean to carry out the proposed change.

“I strongly advised the Dean against making yet another needless gesture questioning the department's overall autonomy without providing sufficient—or even remotely specified—grounds for doing so,” he wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “This was and is the moment to graciously turn the page and there was a more elegant and responsible way to do that, avoiding all drama.”

De Vries also suggested that there were faculty from within the department who would have been better choices to serve as interim chair.

“Chairs serve at the pleasure of the Dean, needless to say, but to intimate that no current senior faculty in the Humanities Center can or should function as chair at this moment of transition is, in my view, preposterous,” he wrote. “This will now come across as a last-ditch desperate effort to change the narrative, deflecting attention away from how this was all handled.”

Bryan explained that her new role as interim chair is administrative and that she will oversee the Center’s budget and staff as well as assisting students, faculty and the advisory board.

“The demands of all our roles as academics are growing each and every year, but with the expert help of [Senior Administrative Coordinator of the HC] Marva Philip, the faculty, and students of the Humanities Center, I’m sure that I can do my part until a new chair is hired or identified,” she wrote in an email to The News-Letter.

Bryan also explained why she was appointed to her role in the middle of the semester.

“In order to begin the process that will lead to the faculty search announcement at the end of this summer, it is necessary to form the Advisory Board and have it begin to meet with department faculty as soon as possible,” she wrote. “For the sake of a cohesive and uninterrupted transition it was decided to appoint the interim chair now rather than in the middle of this planning period.”

She also responded to suspicions that de Vries was removed as Director of the HC because of his role in defending the Center last semester.

“Professor de Vries was absolutely not removed because of his involvement in rallying support for the Humanities Center,” she wrote. “To the contrary, he is to be congratulated for his dedication to the department.“

Boyce-Jacino pointed out that what the email addressed were many of the same issues that the administration hoped the neutral committee would settle.

“Now, it just feels like ‘Oh, you’ve had one neutral committee and another self study before that, and two external reviews before that. Let’s have another one,’” Boyce-Jacino said.

De Vries saw many of the issues raised by the email as already settled by previous reviews of the department and insisted upon the merits of the Center.

“We can, of course, handle yet another undeserved insult but it all has, sadly and no doubt unintentionally, the aftertaste of vindictiveness, presumably justified with suddenly introduced "alternative facts," which will surprise and not convince anyone who knows how our remarkably congenial operation has functioned over the years with collective, fully transparent, indeed, democratic decisions in all crucial matters,” he wrote.

Bryan empahsized that this new advisory board was not another review committee.

“The Board, to consist of four faculty and chaired by Prof. Gaby Spiegel, who has been involved with the Humanities Center for numerous years, will work with faculty to consider some interdisciplinary areas that will expand current collaborative areas and partnerships,” she wrote. “In addition, this will lead to clarification of content and methodological areas for the open rank faculty search this fall.”

Gillespie feels that the administration is singling out the Center for scrutiny.

“It feels like we are back at the first rung of the ladder because the Dean has essentially outlined another self-study for the department to go through” he said.

But he clarified that the individuals appointed to lead the changes at the HC were not a concern.

“We have no qualms with Betsy Bryan. We have no qualms with Gaby Spiegel,” Gillespie said. “It’s just the structure of it and the opacity of the decision making... It could have been a conversation we all could have had together, but instead it was imposed on us.”

He is also worried about the precedent this decision sets in eroding departmental autonomy.

“This is especially worrying going forward for other departments,” he said. “Who is to say that the Dean can’t just remove chairs at will.”

He added that these repeated decisions have damaged the department’s record and its ability to attract new students.

“Though the Dean has granted us survival, her imposed measures and continued restrictions upon the department make it very difficult to convince anyone they should come to the Humanities Center,” Gillespie wrote in an email to The News-Letter, “Not only do these delays and erosions of departmental autonomy exhaust those of us already here, [but also] they prevent us from attracting the best and brightest to Hopkins.”

Boyce-Jacino, who will defend her dissertation this semester, spoke about the stress of working as a graduate student in a department with an unclear future.

“When we met with the Dean last semester, she was really insistent that she was really concerned about the welfare of graduate students and all these things, and I’m sure that’s true,” she said. “But in terms of the effects these kinds of decisions have on the lives of graduate students and the intellectual work of graduate students is nothing but detrimental.”

De Vries offered words of praise to the graduate students’ efforts in defending the HC last semester.

“They—together with the Homewood Faculty Assembly, the local chapter of the AAUP, and many friends of the Humanities Center in and off campus—should take pride in the fact that they secured the continuity of a unique department whose existence should not have been questioned in the first place,” he wrote. “I share their dismay, looking at the whole process that has wasted much of everybody's precious time. But they should stay fully involved, keep an open mind as we reboot our conversations in an optimistic spirit, and not hesitate to speak out again and publicly when that becomes again imperative.”

Bryan also expressed sympathy with the anxiety that members of the HC have felt throughout the whole months-long process.

“This stress was not something that we would ever wish to have occurred, but consultation takes time, and Dean Wendland, as the [neutral] Committee noted was consultative throughout the process,” she wrote. “But it is certainly understandable that students have been nervous and unsure of the ultimate outcome. We hope that a degree of normality can ensue as soon as possible.”

Bryan has contacted students and faculty notifying them about her appointment to the Humanities Center and is planning on meeting them sometime next week.

This article has been updated with responses by former director of the Center Hent de Vries.


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