Snowed

First real snowfall of the winter. So beautif--- It's hard to delight in it as my friends and colleagues anguish over the impossible decision, due tomorrow, whether to pursue "voluntary" departure from the school.

Visibilize-ing Care

As part of the Visibilize-ing Care Festival in the spring, I'll be doing something to mark the restoration of our relationships with the Lang Courtyard trees, once human access to them is restored. But today visibilized other efforts at care, and needs for more. 

The university leadership met online with the faculty of our college, answering various precirculated questions about the impending "voluntary" and likely subsequent "involuntary" departures of faculty and staff, and their effect on curriculum and student enrollment and retention. We didn't learn much. The administration isn't looking for new ideas. They think they've set in motion necessary and humane processes for reducing the workforce of the university in the face of enrollment decline. (The goal seems to be 10-15% of FTEs, however that falls out.) They emphasized that the "voluntary" stage was a way of showing respect and care for the community, maximizing "choice" and even generating new "opportunities," words that went down like lead. 

After they left the zoom room for another meeting, we faculty had some time to debrief. What are the options facing those deemed "eligible" for "voluntary" departure, how spooked are students by imminent changes and how spooked should they be, have we any leverage? It took some time for the spell cast by their budgetary logic to be broken. We're talking not just about people's careers but their livelihoods - families and health care - our lives. There must be other ways of addressing the budget crisis, one for which faculty and staff are not responsible, after all; why are these not being explored? 

The zoom grid, with more people than usual with their cameras on, felt like holding cells, but we could see each other. Someone had to leave and said "in case I'm not here next year, I love you all." This was someone offered early retirement. Others have other "choices," or none. A recently-hired part-time faculty member put it bluntly: "we need to be clear that a lot of us aren't going to be here next year." Sadness rose to anger and resolve. We're not letting this go down without a fight.

I was struck by how the administration's attempt to show care (they could have just let people go as some other places have, they explained, or fired everyone and let them reapply for their jobs, as others have) had backfired. As the deadlines approach for the "eligible" to opt into "voluntary" departure (Monday!), and then to accept or decline the specific offer made to them (2 weeks after that), and then for the administration to announce such "involuntary" departures as they deem necessary (starting January 2nd), we are a community stricken in ways we don't even know. (I know that I am less at risk than many others at this juncture.) The love flowing over the zoom barriers was palpable, tinged with fear and grief.

The convener of the March "Visibilize-ing Care" festival mentioned that some thought the anguish of university restructuring made this the wrong time for it, but others thought it only more valuable. My part of it, "Care of Trees," is inspired by the ways one of the "Religion of Trees" classes marked the passing of some of the Lang courtyard maples. Even as we mark the restoration of some relationships, we - whoever we are, for a lot of us aren't going to be there - will have to find ways to mourn the ruptures of others, too.

On life-support

We're in the news again. 

Things may or may not get better, but they are definitely getting worse first. The ham-fisted way the administration doled out "voluntary" separation packages (most faculty and staff I care about have received one) has reawakened unresolved misunderstandings and tensions between and within divisions, and is creating new ones, too. As with the Part-Time Faculty strike three years ago, it's revealing anew the inequities built into our school.

The damage goes well beyond the full-time faculty and programs explicitly targeted (and the sole concern of those interviewed in the article above). Today I found myself at the semester's final Religion live! gathering in the Cafe surveying the wreckage with four colleagues, none full-time and all of them adversely affected. One is a part-time faculty member of long standing who gave up their slot in next semester's small Religious Studies curriculum for another. The other was there too, but the course they pitched, "Faith as a story," was canceled for low enrollment. (LREL has had to cancel another class next semester as well, leaving just two.) A third, who teaches in a different program, had also seen their regular spring course cut, the first time in ten years it hasn't filled. And the fourth was an MA student who had been counting on applying to the PhD program in Philosophy, only for the university to pause virtually all PhD admissions for the year. 

I was feeling a little like the messengers in Job, who come describing calamities with the refrain and I alone have escaped to tell you.

DIY hat trick

The big reunion happened today - fifteen of the alums who've been involved in the "DIY Religion" class joined us for a final celebration. Three came in person, another dozen online, which turned out to be just right for the capacity of the room. Students helped think of a fun way of celebrating the rewarding conversations they'd had with alums: pairs of current students alums, names pulled from two woolen hats, sat at the front of the room and chatted for three or four minutes about a prompt, also pulled from a hat (by the student from the pair before). 

We each contributed a prompt at the start of the game (I took down some online alums' prompts from the zoom chat) which solicited all manner of interesting anecdotes and reflections. In the end some virtual alums had to leave so we only got through eleven, but it was plenty. (The three prompts which we didn't get to - at right above - may have been picked from the hat and returned!) It all made for a light-hearted and yet open-hearted sharing, smoothly bridging generations and timezones, with every one's voice heard. 

And then, for those there in person, there were donuts from a place an alum had reminisced about. Real or virtual, all are keen to do it again!

Theory in practice

I'm falling into an amusing new habit. Instead of printing out my course syllabi at the start of semester, I'm printing them at the end. Of course students get the syllabi at the start of course through our LMS (learning management system), which they consult with much greater regularity than any syllabus. And things change over the course of a semester, as students choose topics for presentations, etc. These culminating

syllabi are a record of all we actually did, which is always an impressive lot. Am I naive to think they're more likely to keep them this way? In any case, having a collective retrospective read-through is useful for getting feedback on what worked and what didn't, for next time (assuming there is one)! Here's most of the syllabus for this iteration of "Theorizing Religion," with my notes from reflections from each student.

Child's play

Happen to have seen the Brooklyn Museum's version of Edward Hicks' "Peaceable Kingdom" (c. 1834) in their Visible Storage yesterday (we'd gone for the unconvincing "Monet and Venice" blockbuster), just in time for the Old Testament reading for Advent 2. As ever, I'm caught short that it nowhere says "the lion shall lie down with the lamb," but this time I was reeling at all the predatory pairings it does mention. 

The wolf shall live with the lamb;
    the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
the calf and the lion will feed^[b] together,
    and a little child shall lead them.
⁷ The cow and the bear shall graze;
    their young shall lie down together;
    and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
⁸ The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
    and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
⁹ They will not hurt or destroy
    on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
    as the waters cover the sea. (Isaiah 11:6-9, NRSV)

This year, since we are in a time of predators' revachanchism (cf. esp: Hegseth, Pete), it came to me that none of these pairings is arbitrary. Each must recall a time when a leopard actually killed a kid, a bear mauled a cow, a lion attacked an ox, children were killed by snakes. (It was like the moment you realize that the curious details in monastic and legal codes like the Vinaya and Benedict's Rule are reports of actual episodes.) The sheer volume of cases overwhelms, as does the almost deluvian mixed metaphor of a mountain covered by the sea.

We had a guest preacher in church today, who focused on this reading to complement the gospel account of John the Baptist's call to repent - for the kingdom of God is near. Repentance means turning away, she explained, but you can't change course unless you can imagine an alternative. It seems more urgent than ever to imagine a world without normalized, even celebrated violence. Delightfully, she had learned to feel the nearness of the kingdom through reading Ed Yong's wonderful An Immense World.

Cold Moon

Last supermoon of the year, espied early this morning.

Code red

A little update from The New School, where things are not looking good at all. Yesterday all the full-time faculty in the programs slated for pause, merger, reimagining and various kinds of "discontinuance" received letters offering "voluntary separation" packages, as did all non-unionized staff across the university who have served at least four years. At the same time, all full-time faculty over 62 were offered a "voluntary early retirement" package. That's a lot of people spooked and demoralized by the suggestion they are disposable.

A little to my surprise, I didn't receive one of those letters. Being not in a department turned out to be a plus, at least for now. But almost all my friends did get a letter. The hope of course is that enough people are willing and able to take up the "voluntary" offers that there will be no need to turn to "involuntary separations," but we don't know how many people the administration wants to get off the payroll. Meanwhile rumors are swirling about significant and targeted cuts, especially in the erstwhile Graduate Faculty. Nobody seems to know who's calling the shots - deans claim to have been blindsided - so everyone feels at risk.

Acknowledging that the administration's hand has been forced by a budget crisis, this is surely the worst backdrop for ushering in what leadership was touting as the "next generation of undergraduate and graduate credentials." It's terrible for morale, and for the reputation of the school. And, as we all speculate about what programs The New School will support in the future (and the existential question whether there will be place for each of us), it undermines already strained solidarity across and within divisions. Not good times at all.

Has your back

The baboon is one of the forms (with the ibis) of Thoth, the ancient Egyptian god of writing, wisdom, magic and the moon, but this imposing baboon seems just to be a baboon, doing what ancient Egyptian baboons were known to do: praising the rising sun.

Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice

Elect

In the midst of all the other stuff... I'm going to be one of the three co-chairs of The New School's University Faculty Senate next semester.

Wintry mix

Predictably, the Thanksgiving break was long enough for the courtyard maples to shed all their leaves. The ground will still glow red for a spell, but other color will have to wait until the red buds at the end of leafless branches let loose in the spring... Or so I thought, only to be surprised by cardinal (not in the photo)!