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The GoFundMe to defend tenured professors has already raised $27,800 of its $35,000 goal.
GRACE CARDINAL/COURTESY

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By Grace Cardinal, Editor-in-Chief

On Jan. 19, Manhattan College announced the elimination of 20 majors and minors without consulting the curriculum committees or faculty chairs.   

The elimination of these programs was announced on Jan. 21 by the organizer of the “Help Defend Tenure at Manhattan College” GoFundMe, a page dedicated to raising legal fees for faculty. 

The update on the page read: “On January 19 they also announced the elimination of 20 majors and minors, including Religious Studies, Ethics, Critical Race and Ethnicity Studies, Women and Gender Studies, Urban Studies, and all languages except Spanish and English, without consultation with anyone, not the curriculum committees, not the faculty chairs.”

When asked for a statement on why these particular programs were cut, the Office of the President referred The Quadrangle to an email sent out to students on Jan. 16. 

In the email, the president addressed the cuts, saying “To better align our resources with these efforts, we have made the decision to eliminate a limited number of programs with low enrollments. All students currently enrolled in an affected program will be supported to graduate on-time.”

  Per New York State law, all current students with declared majors and minors can finish out their desired program, leaving these cuts to be implemented for the incoming fall class. 

The cuts immediately followed the slew of layoffs of 23 more faculty at the college, 19 of whom were tenured professors. These layoffs brought the total number of axed faculty up to 63 individuals, more than 25% of the college’s total faculty. 

Sources have confirmed to The Quadrangle that among those laid off include Jonathan Keller, Ph.D., and Jordan Pascoe, Ph.D., leaving it unclear who will take over the pre-law program at this time. 

Faculty have also indicated to The Quadrangle that the advisors for Women and Gender Studies, Critical Race and Ethnicity Studies and Urban Studies have been laid off. As advisors are responsible for organizing which courses from other departments will fulfill their programs, students majoring and minoring in these programs may lack the correct guidance to complete their coursework. 

As of Jan. 26, the list of programs up for elimination include:

Undergraduate Majors: art history, Camino, E3MC, environmental studies, French, labor studies, nuclear medicine technology, philosophy, religious studies, urban studies.

Undergraduate Minors/Concentrations: Arabic, theater, Chinese, critical race and ethnicity studies, cultural anthropology, digital arts and humanities, film studies, Italian, Japanese, medieval studies, social services, women and gender studies, ethics.

Graduate Programs: mathematics and data analytics, school building leadership, M.S. accounting. 

The Quadrangle would like to clarify that the M.S. accounting program is the program that has been cut. The program was put on pause last summer in 2023 due to low enrollment, not the recent consolidation of schools and programs. The professional accounting B.S./M.B.A. program is not being eliminated, and remains alive and well in the O’Malley School of Business.

The cuts disproportionately affect programs associated with the previous School of Liberal Arts. Many of the programs included in the cut, such as the digital arts and humanities minor (DASH), cost the college no additional fees to run. 

“There’s no money put into those programs that could be put somewhere else,” Maeve Adams, English professor at the college and director of DASH, said. “So there is a question about why close [these] programs in the context of an argument about financial efficiency, when these programs are free. We’re not actually improving financial efficiency by closing these minor programs that students enroll in…What’s interesting is that these programs are free to run, but there will be a cost to cutting them.

Other major programs, such as philosophy, not only were continuously growing in size before they were cut but were part of a core curriculum for all liberal arts students. 

“Philosophy is one of the strongest, fastest-growing programs at Manhattan College,” an anonymous faculty member confirmed. “Students seek out Catholic colleges for their training in religion, philosophy, and ethics. Even as the college as a whole has lower enrollment, we have over 20% more students taking philosophy classes this year than last year. We are one of the only programs to have zero low-enrolled courses and to have met every class size metric.”

Philosophy is yet another program that will not save the college money to take off of the roster.

“Closing the philosophy major and minor does not save any money,” the faculty member wrote in an email. “We teach so many required classes, like Roots, Ethics, Logic, Critical Thinking, and Faith and Reason. Enough classes will still run for there to be a major or minor – students will just be banned from having that degree on their diploma and résumé and the benefits that come from an official program, such as membership in the national honor society.”

Adams concluded by expressing her frustration at how the cuts are being handled by the administration. 

“It feels potentially short-sighted,” Adams said. “And it’s concerning that the president is not interested in consulting the very people who are far more likely to know about their programs and whether or not those programs, despite actually costing nothing, might impact the value added to the college.” 

Editor’s Note: some reporting was contributed by Kyla Guilfoil.

Editor’s Note 2/5/24: Please note the updated paragraph regarding the elimination of the M.S. in accounting. The Quadrangle would like to emphasize that it was the M.S. that was cut, and not the B.S./M.B.A. program.