Students and faculty within UT Austin's College of Liberal Arts are concerned that entire departments and areas of study will be eliminated after department chairs received written notice of a committee created to consider administrative changes within the school.
The email from Daniel Brinks, the college's associate dean for academic affairs, said the Advisory Committee on Administrative Structure would consider modifying the "administrative structure" due to the college becoming "overly fragmented."
Brinks said the committee will not initially focus "on individual academic programs (several of which may be housed within one department), centers, or institutes."
However, Professor Mary Neuburger said she was told verbally that the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies, which she chairs, will be absorbed into another department "no matter what." Neuburger said no further details were provided, but she is worried eliminating smaller departments would result in the loss of in-depth research on critical topics.
"I think we can all agree that Russia is a really important global player right now," Neuburger said. "It's an important global region. It's the adversary of ours, and there's a war going on that we're very much involved with in relation to Russia. So I think it's really important for us to understand."
Neuburger said her department is just one of many that "offer similar deep expertise in other areas, whether it's global regions or whether it's specific populations of the United States who are very much part of the fabric of our society."
While the email sent on Oct. 23 said there could be "loss of autonomy for small units," exact details of how the review would take place were not included.
Brinks is chairing the committee that includes seven other faculty members — six men and one woman — who represent the departments of Asian Studies, African and African Diaspora Studies, Classics, American Studies, American Sign Language and Linguistics, Spanish and Portuguese, and Asian American Studies.
But with 26 departments and more than 30 research centers and institutes housed within the college, some faculty worry their interests will not be represented.
Julie Minich teaches in the Mexican American and Latina/o Studies Department. She said she is "deeply concerned that an area of knowledge that is of historic importance at the University of Texas at Austin, an area for which this university is internationally known, is being disregarded in this way."
Students are also concerned about the future of their studies. Sydney Jael Wilson, a first-year women and gender studies graduate student, moved to Austin from Atlanta to pursue her degree. Now, she is wondering if her department will have funding for her to be a teaching assistant next semester.
Wilson said once she heard about the restructuring, she sent emails to administrators asking for clarity, but said her concerns were never addressed.
"Everything has been happening in the dark but not as transparent as you would hope for," Wilson said. "It's been causing a lot of stress as someone who moved across the country to study here, and the possibility of my department not existing is terrifying."
It is unclear where the directive to create the committee came from, but some faculty have expressed concern about statements made by university leadership.
In a speech last week, UT Austin President Jim Davis questioned whether educators have failed to offer multiple perspectives in their teaching environments. He said he would ensure the university would hold itself accountable to academic freedom while providing a "balanced education."
However, some faculty are concerned the message they are receiving is the opposite.
"I would say that there has been a lot of talk about viewpoint diversity on campus, and strangely it has become a code word for suppressing viewpoint diversity," Minich said. "The claim of the [UT Austin] administration is that they're trying to depoliticize the university. This is not depoliticizing it; It is politicizing it."
The creation of the committee is not the only sign of change happening at the university. Earlier this month, the University of Texas System began auditing courses related to gender studies. A faculty member was also dismissed from his administrative duties in the provost's office due to "ideological differences."
UT Austin is also the only academic institution out of original nine that were offered the Trump administration compact that has not said whether it will sign. The White House offer asks universities to revise government structures to ensure free speech and get rid of any institutional units that "spark violence" against conservative ideas in exchange for favored access to federal funding.
The College of Liberal Arts and UT Austin declined to provide a comment for this story.
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