In a further attempt to cut costs at Yeshiva University, President Richard Joel announced just days ago at a town hall meeting that the faculties of the Arts and Sciences Departments on both YU’s uptown and downtown campuses would merge over the next three years. Expectedly, students on both campuses are left wondering about the future of their academic careers at YU; but perhaps more surprisingly, so is the faculty.
The faculty’s uncertainty comes as a result of feeling blindsided by the administration in the days following the merger announcement. According to Dr. Joseph Luders, head of the Political Science department at Stern College, “the department chairs were not consulted about any specifics prior to the recent announcement. That said, I believe the Faculty Council was apprised of the prospective changes shortly beforehand, and word about the plan was indirectly communicated to the faculty.”
On the other hand, Dr. Nora Nachumi, SCW representative on the Faculty Council and an English professor, said that department heads were consulted prior to the announcement of the merger. Stern College Dean Karen Bacon also said that faculty has been spoken to about the merger all along as an idea. “This is not a surprise,” she said in an interview with Elana Kook, Observer editor-in-chief.
In a certain sense, the academic merger is not as shocking as it may initially seem. YU’s History and Economics departments have already been merged for years: those teachers offer office hours on both campuses with an office on each.
Moving forward, the merger will move from department to department. According to Dean Bacon, when there is a resource on one campus and not the other, this will be the main source of the faculty movement. For example, next semester, the analytical chemistry teacher uptown will also teach his class at the downtown campus.
In terms of transportation for those professors, Dean Bacon said that there is currently a car service for faculty that runs between campuses. That service will be maintained throughout the merger.
She also said that faculty will still have a cap of three courses to teach per semester. “It’s a function of how many courses they teach, not how many different courses,” Dean Bacon said. “Some professors will prefer this model of being on both campuses because since they are teaching the same class twice, there will be less preparation.” She also noted the benefit for smaller departments that have only two full time professors. With the merger, they will have a larger department and the students will have more resources.
But while the academic merger may effectively enhance some of YU’s secular academic departments, the same cannot be said for academic Jewish studies. Many of the seeming complications with the merger arise due to the stark discrepancies between the curriculum structures at Yeshiva College and Stern. While women at Stern College are required to fulfill a “CORE” requirement of Judaic studies through classes interspersed throughout the school day, men at Yeshiva College participate in yeshiva style learning in the morning, and are additionally required to fulfill academic Judaic requirements in the afternoon alongside their general requirements.
That being said, the academic Judaic faculty at Stern College is well integrated with the secular academic faculty, so it is easy to envision a Stern College Bible professor, for example participating in a university-wide merger.
But uptown, according to Dr. Aaron Koller, assistant dean of Yeshiva College and beloved Bible professor, the Roshei Yeshiva of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS) who teach the morning yeshiva classes have not participated in merger discussions due to the seperateness of the yeshiva and university faculties.
“There’s a serious cultural divide between the yeshiva and the Jewish Studies department,” he said in a phone interview.
At a meeting on Monday led by Yeshiva College’s Jewish Studies department chair Dr. Shalom Holtz, the uptown Judaic faculty was invited to advocate for the maintenance of its faculty and the current academic structure. The YU administration has proposed reducing the Yeshiva College academic Jewish studies requirement from six required courses to three; while this has been in the works for years, the discussions are now becoming more concrete.
“This raises a question of identity,” said Dr. Koller. “Yeshiva College is distinctive because part of its academic structure includes Judaic studies aside from the morning yeshiva program. So the notion that it would be slashed in half raises some questions about people’s priorities.”
Despite the troubling approach the administration has taken to determining the merger, Dr. Koller is attempting an optimistic approach to the potential changes. “There’s a lot of room for reevaluation of our current academic structure,” he said. He noted that the college has been operating under the same model for years without much reformation, and given the evolution of Jewish education with the availability of translated Artscroll texts and Wikipedia, students may not need classes with as strong a focus on textual skills, or a survey of Jewish history course.
Looking forward to next fall, students won’t see any noticeable changes to their academic environment. And professors may not know the fate of their departments for years to come. “There is currently very little information about the merger,” said Dr. Luders.
Only time will tell if the proposed merger will prove successful and effective at Yeshiva University.