With admissions to 18 majors paused, programs brace for ‘uncertain’ futures

Julia Boehning
Enterprise Editor

In 2005, while Lauren Surovi explored colleges offering majors in Italian language, Syracuse University quickly caught her eye.

Whether it be for SU’s large Department of Language, Literature and Linguistics, study abroad options or proximity to her home in Pennsylvania, Surovi felt like the university “checked all (her) boxes.”

Now, almost two decades after her days as a student, she finds herself back at SU leading the very Italian program that shaped her college experience.

Three years after working for her alma mater, Surovi said she still feels like “the luckiest person on campus.” But now, after SU unexpectedly paused admissions to the Italian program, she said she’s holding onto hope that her luck won’t get cut short.

“I came to Syracuse to study Italian. That’s part of the reason why I chose Syracuse,” Surovi said. “So it’s been particularly devastating for me now that I am a professor here to find out that our program is paused and the future is uncertain.”

Italian is one of multiple language majors to have its admissions paused — something Surovi and other program affiliates described as a “shocking” shift from SU’s previous commitments to promoting global perspectives and expanding students’ worldview.

SU’s mission statement includes a clause about “encouraging global study,” according to its website. Within section 1.1 of the faculty manual, last updated online on April 17, 2024, the university states that it supports “close interaction and engagement with the world—locally, nationally, and globally.”

One Italian dual major, Frank Gambino, heard about the pause to his major through a professor involved with the University Senate. As a senior, the decision won’t impact his degree, but he thinks the decision may be harmful to future SU students.

Gambino said most of his peers didn’t initially enroll in SU as Italian majors, but after taking courses in the language, many “fell in love” with the program.

“Public schools give people this impression of, ‘Why would you spend money studying a language? What are you going to do with that?’” Gambino said. “Do you know how many corporations are out there that need people who speak Italian to work for them? There’s a lot of closed-mindedness when it comes to how crucial it is for people to learn other languages.”

While there are only three full-time faculty members affiliated with Italian, Gambino said the program’s small size makes everyone feel more connected — like they’re “all friends.”

Anne Leone, an assistant professor in Italian, said she wishes the campus community knew the program teaches not only language skills but also literature and culture classes, as well as communication skills.

As the university increasingly invests in its College of Engineering and Computer Science in preparation for the arrival of Micron Technology, Leone said she wants administrators to consider how a foreign language education fits into business priorities. Micron, for example, has several international locations — including four sites in Italy.

“A lot of our students will say, ‘Oh, I’m doing a major in aerospace engineering, and I also have a major in Italian. And actually, the recruiter said that’s what made my application stand out,’” Leone said. “It really helps to have that cultural and linguistic knowledge.”

However, Leone and Surovi said they don’t understand how the administration chose which majors to pause. When Leone saw the external review of the program, she felt it looked like the department was “doing great.” Surovi said Italian has increased its enrollment over the past couple of years and wanted to know more about how SU collected the data.

Throughout the semester, Surovi and the program have been pushing to boost enrollment and find ways to keep Italian alive at SU. Gambino was one of several people to speak at the student-led Humanities Town Hall, where students involved in the paused programs shared why they believe a humanities education is important.

Behzad Mortazavi, the College of Arts and Sciences dean, wrote in an email obtained by The Daily Orange that each of the paused majors had 10 or fewer students enrolled. Today, Surovi said Italian has 12 declared majors.

The Daily Orange couldn’t confirm Italian’s official current enrollment numbers.

Though the future of Italian remains unclear, current faculty and students said they’re hopeful they’ve demonstrated to administrators why the program — while small — has a large impact on its students.

“Italian has a place on this campus, and I’m proud of the work that we have done. I’m proud of my colleagues and my students,” Surovi said. “I hope to continue to support my students for the years to come. So I will hold out faith. I am not without hope.”

Samantha Olander
Enterprise Editor

When Darla Hobbs arrived at Syracuse University as an undergraduate, she didn’t feel like she had a place on campus.

She said she moved through SU without a sense of community until she walked into an African American studies course — a moment she described as finding the first space where she felt welcome.

Now, she’s a second-year graduate student in the Pan African studies program.

“This is where I found myself at SU,” Hobbs said. “It kind of brings all of the different pieces of me together.”

For many within the department, that feeling has made SU’s admissions pause especially painful. Some students and alumni said the move doesn’t just threaten a college program, but one of the few academic and cultural spaces grounded in Black history, identity and scholarship.

Hobbs said the department has long served as “the little piece of the university that we can call our own.” She said seeing it placed on hold was “disheartening.”

James Haywood Rolling Jr., the department’s interim chair, emphasized that while the major has been removed from the Common Application for incoming students, current undergraduates can still declare a major or minor in AAS — and, for now, “all the lights are on,” with courses running and programs continuing as usual.

Savannah Wilson, a sophomore who works in the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, said the department is a crucial support system for Black students on a predominantly white campus. According to 2023-24 SU enrollment data, white undergraduates outnumber Black undergraduates by roughly seven to one.

She fears the pause proves that SU does not view the field as essential and will make the program less visible.

“It reinforces what we already know,” Wilson said. “We are low on the totem pole. We are not high priority.”

Those fears draw heavily on the department’s history. AAS grew out of Black student activism in the late 1960s, when demonstrations over SU’s failure to support Black students led to the creation of the program. It also led to the creation of the MLK Library, which remains one of few dedicated spaces for Black scholarship on campus.

In recent years, the department has faced faculty turnover, stretches without stable leadership and staffing gaps, where students and faculty feel the program is already being asked to do more with less.

Rolling said that, despite these strains, AAS courses are often full, drawing far more interest at the class level than major enrollment alone reflects.

Alum Agyei Tyehimba — who helped lead protests to protect AAS in the late 1980s — said the pause fits into long-running tensions. He said he was initially “shocked” to see admissions halted, though not surprised, pointing to what he described as “a kind of corporate way of thinking.”

“These students won’t be students forever … What type of world will they inherit if the dominant theme is how much does that cost? How much do we save? How much do we make?” he said.

Tyehimba also tied the decision to national attacks on humanities and identity-based fields, noting the pause comes as diversity, equity and inclusion offices, ethnic studies programs and humanities departments at universities nationwide face heightened political pressure and funding cuts.

“If you’re in a nation that is fascist-leaning, what would be a very good political move? Definitely to attack humanities because they are typically the areas that produce the Dr. Kings,” he said.

Jeninya Holley, another Pan African studies graduate student, said she’s concerned about the program’s long-term stability, noting fewer majors in the future could weaken the intellectual community that drew them in. Holley called the program “enriching,” saying it exposes students to perspectives beyond dominant narratives.

Above all, many said the pause sends a clear message about who — and what kinds of knowledge — the university chooses to prioritize.

“It doesn’t matter what you think it’s about,” Tyehimba said. “It’s saying to them that you are unimportant, you are disposable, we can disregard you and we’re indifferent to your needs and your interests.”

Griffin Uribe Brown
Social Media Editor

Religion courses have been offered since the founding of Syracuse University, and the Department of Religion was made a distinct department in 1895.

This fall, the department enacted structural changes to its religion major. Department chair Gareth Fisher, who joined the faculty in 2008, said the religion major’s restructuring — which simplified the major requirements — will hopefully save the department from being permanently cut.

“We’re hoping that we’ll survive the review process on the grounds that we’ve already been thinking about innovating and thinking about ways to attract new students,” Fisher said. “We just haven’t seen the fruits of that change yet.”

The new structure allows the department to bring students into the major or minor through “multiple gateways,” Fisher said. Rather than a standardized 101 course, a student’s first religion course could be at the 300-level course.

“Because of the size and just kind of the tight-knit closeness of the department, the professors are amazing,” Evan Fay, the department’s undergraduate chair and junior, said. “They’re all very interested in my interests and developing my skills and in my career.”

Fay, who studies both religion and broadcast and digital journalism, said it would be a “travesty” for SU and other colleges to lose their religion programs, potentially limiting religion education to theological schools, he said.

He said more students and more perspectives would strengthen the program.

“A major in religion helps with any profession that involves communication with other people, to study in comparative religion helps me understand people better and connect with people on a deeper level,” Fay said.

Fisher said that he agrees many SU programs, particularly “duplicates,” could benefit from being merged or modified, but majors that exist as a department’s only major, like religion or African American studies, should remain their “own thing.”

Students have different reasons for choosing religion, Fisher said, recounting a few examples: a pre-medical student seeking to better understand patients, a philosophy major interested in thought and critical thinking or an international relations major learning about global cultures.

“Religion is a topic, it is a phenomenon that exists in the world and has existed throughout human history,” Fisher said. “Then we study that phenomenon from many, many different disciplinary aspects.”

Fisher said he worries the review process is moving too hastily and will harm programs that SU needs, even if university administrators don’t realize it now.

“Normally, curricular processes don’t really go that fast,” Fisher said. “I’ve been here 18 years, and we’ve always been thinking about ways to better attract majors and minors.”

Delia Sara Rangel
News Editor

Syracuse University sophomore Lily Facenda said that throughout her college search, she looked for a university with a lively Jewish community and a corresponding major.

In her hometown, she said she hadn’t been surrounded by many people who share her culture. Facenda, a dual modern Jewish studies and communication sciences and disorders major, said she arrived at SU hoping to learn more about her identity.

“This major was a perfect way for me to add a real part of who I am into my learning experience,” Facenda said. “I was really looking forward to furthering my academics in a setting that I could make as Jewish as I wanted to be.”

When she heard new admissions to her major had been paused, she was disappointed to see her identity-based program and others like African American studies now on hold.

“It’s really important to see yourself and see people like you in classes, especially in places where certain groups have been excluded historically,” she said. “I think that (the paused majors) are so incredibly crucial to inclusion and for people to feel important and to feel seen and to feel heard.”

When religion and modern Jewish studies professor and Director of Graduate Studies James Watts learned his program’s admissions were put on pause, he said he was “horrified.”

Watts said courses in the program have no prerequisites, allowing his classes to be filled with interested students. He fears that if the major is eliminated, the university will cut many of the classes serving the larger student body.

“SU will save no money by killing the majors, not one cent,” he said. “The majors are supported by people taking the courses out of general interest. So in that sense, it’s irrational.”

Throughout President Donald Trump’s second term, his administration has targeted higher education institutions for allegations of antisemitism, using it as justification to revoke federal funds.

B.G. Rudolph Professor of Judaic Studies Ken Frieden said the main function of the program is to teach the SU community about Judaism. He said many of his classes are made up of non-Jewish students.

“Especially at a time like this, when everyone says antisemitism is increasing, you would think that universities would care about Jewish studies,” Frieden said. “Especially if it means educating people to understand better what the Jewish tradition is and what Judaism is.”

As of September 2024, SU had around 2,500 undergraduate Jewish students, making up roughly 16% of its undergraduate student body. Hillel International — the largest collegiate Jewish organization in the world — ranked SU as number six in its list of top 60 private universities by Jewish population.

With a large Jewish population, faculty wonder where the university’s priorities lie.

“What kind of institution is Syracuse University? What does it want to be?” Modern Jewish studies and religion professor Zachary Braiterman said. “And what is the place of the humanities and what is the future of the humanities without these diverse portfolios?”

Braiterman would often boast the program’s offerings to community members and parents. Without a major, he said he can’t do that.

In keeping and offering the major, Braiterman said it’ll signal that modern Jewish studies “actually matters” to the university.

“It’s been a really rough year for lots of people in the community, the larger Jewish community, and the Syracuse Jewish community in particular,” he said. “And the very moment where the country is confused by race and religion and the Middle East and Jews, the university is deciding to cut back these programs?”

Amid the ongoing war in Gaza, he said modern Jewish studies courses have seen higher enrollment numbers.

While the program doesn’t have “many” majors and minors, Frieden said it’s interdisciplinary, affiliated with the English, religion and language, literatures and linguistics departments.

“This major was a perfect way for me to add a real part of who I am into my learning experience,” Facenda said. “It was really, really important to me to be involved religiously in college but also academically, in harmony with my identity.”

Kate Jackson
Asst. Copy Editor

After taking one Roman literature course, Bridget Barr switched her major from forensic science to classics. A year later, admissions to the major were paused.

Barr, now a sophomore also majoring in English, learned in mid-September that Syracuse University planned to pause admissions to 18 majors, including classics and classical civilizations.

 ”It is concerning that the pause majors all come from the arts and the humanities,” Barr said. “Especially because pausing them might be the first step in phasing them out entirely, when these are voices that we need to be introducing and hearing more from.”

Barr said not hearing the news directly from the department made students and professors feel like an “afterthought.” She said many felt “blindsided” by what was happening.

Classics and Classical Civilizations Department Chair Jeffrey Carnes said, between the two majors, around six to seven students are currently enrolled, and seven students are enrolled in the classics minor.

The Daily Orange could not confirm official enrollment data.

There are two faculty members in the department — Carnes and Associate Teaching Professor Matthieu Herman van der Meer. Both teach literature and language courses in Latin and Greek, which they said often fill up with non-classics majors.

Like faculty in the other paused majors, Carnes and van der Meer said they found out about the pause during the mid-September meeting with Arts and Sciences Dean Behzad Mortazavi.

Since then, Carnes said they’ve advocated to protect the classics major, but find it difficult without new students. The classics major doesn’t require many university resources, such as teaching assistants or labs, he added.

Van der Meer, an untenured professor, said he doesn’t think SU will renew his contract next year if the major is cut.

Both van der Meer and Carnes said they believe the decision to pause, and potentially cut classics majors, was made long before faculty were informed.

“Humanities have always been the decorative extra, and this marginalization just continues with the closing of these programs,” van der Meer said.

Despite the major’s small size, many classics students said they appreciated the individualized support and devoted professors. As a senior classics and biology major, Hannah Murphy said SU appealed to her because it offered both large programs and a liberal arts core.

She said removing humanities programs like classics could affect interest among incoming students. Many humanities students, in particular, often build community and are more involved on campus because of their smaller programs, she said.

Lucy Lee-Moore, a sophomore classics and anthropology dual major, agreed that having fewer humanities majors will hurt students’ overall learning. Smaller majors like classics, she said, curate a well-rounded education.

Lee-Moore said she applied to SU because it was a research-focused institution with many niche majors, alongside broader departments.

Despite enrolling as a freshman illustration major, Lee-Moore said she liked SU’s many offerings. She took an ancient Greek and Roman class her first semester, and it quickly became her favorite class.

Similar to Barr, she decided to switch to classics, planning to pursue a related career.

Lee-Moore, Murphy and Barr echo how passionate their classics professors are. They said having smaller programs helps them build stronger connections and feel supported.

Van der Meer said that, with little job availability in humanities or research positions, he might have to look for unconventional work — maybe even working at a Trader Joe’s.

“I think that losing those professors, losing these classes, would be a loss, not just for my department, but for the university overall,” Lee-Moore said.