The report of the UCSC Humanities Task Force was out Friday, prefaced by a grim
letter from the dean: apocalypse on the horizon, i.e. returning all open
provisions still remaining under Humanities control, and beginning to fire
staff and lecturers, while not hiring replacements for retiring faculty. The
division took care of the 2009-10 budget cut with furloughs (about 80%), and
cuts to research, graduate support, and lecturers (mostly in language, it
seems). The impending cut, for 2010–11, will be at least as large, perhaps
almost twice as large (from 975K to 1,950K), no matter what the state’s
governor does. He is currently gesturing towards the future, with incantations
regarding a constitutional amendment—another automatism—that would return
total funding of higher education in California to above 10%. Good luck.

The Task Force’s recommendations are:

• Rearrange the desk chairs (or try) and combine History of Consciousness, American Studies, and Feminist Studies in such a way that all tenured faculty are able to participate in graduate instruction;
• move the writing program under other auspices than the colleges (either VPDUE or the division), and offer greater use of GSIs. Another reshuffling.
• *and*, the meat of this report, seriously cut the language program (option a, page 2, i.e. “eliminating language offerings that support small or marginal curricular programs while focusing resources on languages that support major programmatic initiatives;” the other three options are impractical or simply incantations). Much ink, surprisingly, was devoted to the Language Program: reduce or cut Hebrew, Hindi, Portuguese, and Russian; reduce the number of courses in other languages; trim the series (can’t afford to have two years of language instruction now); maintain Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese (translation of “languages that help prepare a professional work force that serves the state of California and the Pacific Rim.”?). Strangely enough, while proposing cuts, the report wants to encourage the greater use of grads in language instruction. It speaks of departments in the plural that would identify graduate students who have the skills to teach foreign languages: I think we are talking about one department, Literature. This “would be an important element of their graduate study and essential for them to compete in the academic job market.” Yes, especially now: brilliant forecast on a market that is shutting down even on lecturers.

Welcome, incoming grad students: we have work for you in core courses, writing,
and even languages (no matter your level in a foreign language). So one can
maintain graduate programs that provide part-timers across the nation. The dance must continue. How delicately put, page 3:

Increasing the use of GSIs in the curricula of these programs offers a significant, as yet untapped opportunity to support graduate students in all disciplines with an interest in second-language pedagogy and/or pedagogy in college-level composition.