This past Wednesday, April 6th, students on the Dean’s Student Council representing the concerns of their respective interdisciplinary programs in their role as representatives and the student of programs inquired upon the fate and reasoning behind the anchoring of interdisciplinary programs in departmental disciplines.  These are the programs affected and the departments they will be anchored in:

• American Studies to English
• Asian Studies to Critical Languages
•  Jewish Studies to Religion
• Latin American Studies to History
• Women's & LGBT Studies to Sociology

The questions that were asked pertained not only to why this was happening and what would happen. In regards to the majors/minors/certificates, they will all be maintained through this transition. Additionally, there will still be a faculty advisor specific to these programs. The one main difference made clear was that there would be no more directors for each program. Meaning, there, at this moment in the decision making, will be no “point person” or “chair” of the programs. The students were also informed and assured that this would not change the curriculum, the faculty (aside from the loss of the director), and the general course offering and program strength. The programs will still maintain an interdisciplinary focus despite having being put in one discipline.

The Dean offered an explanation on the front page of the CLA website here: http://www.cla.temple.edu/2011/04/interdisciplinary-programs/

Our main concerns stem from the practical logistics of placing an interdisciplinary program in the bounds and under the control of a single department. If the department does not have control over the program which would rhetorically assume autonomy of the program, which contrast what is being retracted by this administrative gesture in practice. Although we are aware that these changes are themselves changing and will be fluid until the date of effect, July 1, 2011, students feel the need to express their concerns soundly. In an open letter from two Temple Alumni of interdisciplinary programs, we found multiple arguments to consider including: “these programs will no longer have directors to guide the daily operations, address student needs and, above all, to provide vision and leadership to these important academic fields.” Additionally, if this change has nothing to do with the budget, as the Dean stated in the meeting, then why is it being changed? The ideological inferences that could be made regarding this change are innumerable. There is a concern that underrepresented groups that study underrepresented populations are being compromised.

What we are calling for now is transparency regarding the committees that makes these decisions and a more specific breakdown of the reasoning behind this administrative change and anchoring of programs that by nature are ‘un-anchorable.’