Cuts to Philosophy Are Part of Massive Layoffs at St. Norbert College

“The problem is, the administration keeps coming back for more, and more, and more, and it never stops.”

That’s a former president of St. Norbert College in Wisconsin, Thomas Kunkel, critiquing the plan of the college’s current president, Laurie Joyner, to cut 13 majors and 35-40 faculty.

He says, in a public letter: “Given all the previous vandalism inflicted on the instructional staff there, I frankly haven’t a clue what percentage of the remaining fulltime faculty 40 jobs represents. But obviously it’s huge—crippling, without doubt.”

According to a source at the college, philosophy is not on the list of majors to be eliminated. However, the positions of two the four remaining philosophy faculty were recommended for elimination. (Two philosophy faculty were also eliminated in a previous round of cuts last year.) Among other faculty positions recommended for termination were all of the college’s theology faculty and most of the historians, artists, physicists, chemists, and mathematicians.

Last week the Faculty voted for a resolution strongly opposing the proposed cuts and asking for conversation with the Board of Trustees.

From Kunkel’s letter:

Again, I’m not sure what President Joyner’s plan is. I mean, I know she has a plan, because even in the transition period, before she came to campus, it was clear from her conversations with us that she had deep cutting in mind and some pre-formed notion of where she wanted to take SNC, and it surely didn’t comport with the path SNC had been traveling, very successfully, for generations. That’s why I’m so confident her apocalyptic projections are altogether calculated. I’m just not sure to what end.

Now, if you are—and if you are absolutely, positively confident that is the right direction—then by all means, give her the green light. But if you have any serious qualms at all—if you worry that you, even with the best of intentions, might be snuffing out the light on this 127-year-old jewel of an institution—then take a breath, back off these dire proposed cuts, and insist on getting more facts. You can always resume cuts on this scale later. But you can never undo them, if you’re wrong.

Kunkel’s letter, worth reading, is here. Local news reports about the cuts are here and here.