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To the Syracuse University community,

At a moment when the country and its culture are fundamentally confused about race, religion, Jews and the Middle East, Syracuse University paused the enrollment of new majors in the Department of African American Studies, and the Department of Religion along with European languages and other programs.

Based on harsh budgetary pressures, the decision by SU to pause new enrollments with a possibility of ultimately closing some programs will cause real damage to the undergraduate experience at SU. It will make SU less attractive to students and their families, and is only generating confusion among students at SU.

The bachelor of arts in modern Jewish studies at SU takes the Jewish experience in modern times as its signature focus. A student minoring in Jewish studies or majoring in modern Jewish studies can build their coursework around a flexible, individually crafted course of study.

Courses explore American, European, Israeli and Yiddish literatures, Jewish thought and culture, Jewish history, Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Holocaust and antisemitism, as well as an introduction to Judaism, the Hebrew Bible, the classical Jewish textual tradition and Hebrew language.

At its core, Jewish studies provides critical discourse that contributes to the understanding of social change and communal resilience, human value and personal meaning; it does so today at a moment of profound social and psychic disruption.

Programs such as Jewish studies, African American studies, Middle Eastern studies, religion and foreign languages complement and enhance other areas of study. We draw from an array of cultural perspectives – including perspectives from minority communities – that are typically overlooked in larger programs of study such as English, history, philosophy and political science.

I believe our classes in the Jewish studies program attract robust enrollment from students with diverse backgrounds from across all colleges within SU, and I notice this in my own sections. Majors and minors enjoy a personalized and intensive student experience with faculty and graduate student teaching assistants.

Our classes, which typically generate repeat enrollments, contribute to the study of “culture, community and change,” a rubric SU itself is now actively promoting as a “pillar of distinctive excellence.”

A decision to eliminate enrollment in the modern Jewish studies B.A., along with other impacted programs, would be nothing less than a body blow to the Jewish studies program at SU. The decision would:

Form part of a larger assault on the humanities writ large in the larger life of the modern universities are now dominated by STEM and professional schools and programs.
Cut off potential avenues of growth for advanced undergraduate study, which will not easily grow back once eliminated.
Send an unambiguous and negative signal to students, faculty, parents and members of the larger Jewish community that Jewish studies as well as other impacted areas of study simply don’t matter at SU.
Undermine SU’s national reputation for serious humanistic research if not its status as an R-1 research institution.

The impacted programs now under pause are instead being forced to bear the burden of large, systemic failures and mismanaged institutional priorities that plague modern universities.

Indeed, these cuts at a time of war, racial and religious polarization, festering antisemitism and a climate of authoritarianism across the globe are a symptom of severe disorder and malfunction in university life and the culture at large.

When I was an undergraduate many decades ago, I was one of two majors in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at University of Massachusetts Amherst. I was privileged to engage intensively with wonderful professors who looked after me. I went on to pursue graduate work at Stanford and a rewarding academic career here at SU, which has been my home for 28 years.

Before the age of intellectual austerity, one could imagine the existence of small programs thriving in a greater university ecosystem. Course enrollments in the Jewish studies program, all of them cross-listed across the humanities, are evidence of student interest in the classes we offer. SU should be promoting diverse areas of study, not abandoning them in the face of negative headwinds affecting humanistic study across the entire modern university.

A great institution of higher education is only as strong as its smaller programs.

The very real challenge addressed by the program review is how to grow the number of majors and minors in our impacted programs and across the humanities. I have every confidence that faculty in the Jewish studies program and other impacted programs want nothing more than to engage the larger university community in reimagining the future of these programs together.

To this end, I would especially invite students and their families to consider the value of the student experience in majors and minors across the humanities and in small, intensely vital
programs of study – both as complements to other areas of study and as inherently
interesting in their own right.

Human values, skills and inquiry are precisely crucial now at the very moment when artificial intelligence and other technological transformations take on a life of their own, powered by massive conglomerations and polarizing the country and culture. Institutions of higher education such as SU should double down on the humanities and support our small, impacted programs as essential to the mission of the modern university in service to the common good.

This letter was submitted by Zachary J. Braiterman, the acting director of the Jewish Studies Program at SU and professor in the Department of Religion. He can be reached at zbraiter@syr.edu

Published on October 21, 2025 at 9:03 pm