AATSEEL/ ACTR/ ASEEES Joint Letter to U of Oregon

As the presidents of the three largest professional associations for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies in the United States, we write to express our deep concern about plans at the University of Oregon to close the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies Program (REEES). The closure of REEES, together with other programs in the College of Arts and Sciences, amounts to a radical disinvestment in the humanities and specifically from the humanistic study of international cultures. This does a grave disservice to Oregon and to our country. The intercultural understanding and empathy that UO graduates gain in the study of the humanities are cornerstones of effective and positive engagement with the world, and these skills will only grow in importance as UO students enter a job market that is being transformed by AI technologies. 

The Program’s closure would trigger layoffs of tenured and career teaching faculty. While these plans are in preliminary stages and faculty are now urging administrators to change their minds, we feel it important to raise alarm before affected faculty receive official termination letters in early September.  
 
Faculty in REEES are very active in research and have published important monographs and papers in top presses and journals. These include: Katya Hokanson, A Woman’s Empire: Russian Women and Imperial Expansion in Asia (U Toronto P, 2023) and Writing at Russia’s Border (U Toronto P, 2008); Susanna Lim, China and Japan in the Russian Imagination: to the Ends of the Orient, 1685-1922 (Routledge, 2013); and Jenifer Presto, Beyond the Flesh: Alexander Blok, Zinaida Gippius, and the Symbolist Sublimation of Sex (U Wisconsin P, 2008) and The Geopoetics of Catastrophe: Russian Modernism on Italian Terrain (U Toronto P, forthcoming). These works are cross-disciplinary, engaging transnational political and cultural relations between Russia, Europe, Central Asia, and East Asia, as well as gender studies, comparative literature, and ecocriticism. The loss of faculty, graduate courses, and expertise in Russian literature and culture, as well as language, would irreparably harm graduate education in adjacent units, especially the graduate programs in Comparative Literature and History, which have attracted many students with interests in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia.

Layoffs of all instructional faculty, regardless of rank, are cause for distress. The layoffs of the tenured professors are especially shocking for what they reveal about UO’s lack of commitment to tenure and academic freedom and UO’s refusal to uphold these fundamental values central to the core mission of the University as a space for free, critical, and creative inquiry.  

The University of Oregon’s mission statement declares that the University is devoted “to educating the whole person, and to fostering the next generation of transformational leaders and informed participants in the global community. Through these pursuits, we enhance the social, cultural, physical, and economic wellbeing of our students, Oregon, the nation, and the world.” Closing REEES goes directly against UO’s identity as a truly global public university that serves the students of the state of Oregon as well as many out-of-state and international students and, in the words of UO’s mission statement, “seek[s] to enrich the human condition.”

Furthermore, Russian is the fourth most commonly spoken language other than English in the state of Oregon. Closing REEES will leave the residents of Oregon with no access to MA-level studies in Russian and East European Studies, and it will reduce the options for undergraduate study of Russian to a single university in the Oregon higher educational system. Finally, it also harms the University of Oregon’s reputation as a nationally and internationally respected Research I university.  

We urge you to reconsider this decision, which causes irreparable harm to the University of Oregon’s students, faculty, national reputation, and the broader community. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Dr. Adrienne Edgar, University of California, Santa Barbara
President, Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES)

Dr. William J. Comer, Portland State University, Current President

Dr. Karen Evans-Romaine, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Past President

Dr. Colleen McQuillen, University of Southern California, Incoming President
American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL)

Dr. Olga Magnotta Klimova, University of Pittsburgh
President, American Council of Teachers of Russian (ACTR)