08/22/2025
Dear President Alivisatos, Provost Baicker, Dean Nelson, and Trustees,
We are undergraduates and alumni of the undergraduate College at the University of Chicago, writing to you in support of the University’s departments of area studies. It has recently become clear, thanks to reporting in the Chicago Maroon and the Chicago Tribune, that drastic changes to UChicago’s Division of the Arts and Humanities are currently under consideration. While it isn’t yet clear what changes will actually take place, it has been reported that the Provost’s office is considering reducing the number of departments in the Division from 15 to eight and ending the teaching of many languages, especially languages with small enrollments. If changes like these come to pass, the University’s world-renowned area studies faculty would, by and large, no longer be able to maintain the rigorous training in historically significant world languages, and in the vast canons of literature and systems of thought associated with these languages, for which UChicago has long been known.
Faculty in area studies can attest better than we can that the shuttering of these departments as independent entities, or even a major reduction of their current functions, would be a great loss to their respective disciplines. To take one example, the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations (one of the departments apparently most at risk of closure), is arguably the best department of its kind in the Americas. Its existence is unquestionably integral to the continuing production of knowledge about ancient and modern South Asia, and to the passing down of skills necessary to fluently read three thousand years’ worth of South Asian texts. And although our Department of Germanic Studies is also relatively small, it too is at the top of its field: its faculty and graduate students not only influence global intellectual trends, but in many cases have established these trends themselves. Stripped of UChicago’s independent department, in which scholars from across the world participate in mutually supportive academic community through conferences, colloquia and two cutting-edge academic journals, the field of Germanic Studies would profoundly suffer. Similar assertions could be made of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and yet other small departments and programs which are evidently now in danger.
We, as undergraduates and recent undergraduate alumni, want to express that these and other departments are not only essential as hubs of research but are also essential to what we undergraduates have understood UChicago to be. Many of us have taken history and literature courses from professors and graduate students in small area studies departments who—far from letting their intensive research distract from their teaching responsibilities—have used their expertise to bring cutting-edge knowledge directly to students, and to foster in-depth discussions about ideas that are often poorly understood. Many of us have taken classes in world languages that are rarely taught at other universities which we chose not to attend. Whether these classes have had only two students or more than a dozen, they have provided spaces for us to form enriching, intellectually stimulating communities with other undergraduates. Nearly all of us, the undersigned, have benefited from the frequent lectures, artistic showcases, and community gatherings facilitated by the various area studies departments, which have allowed us to expand our intellectual horizons and form lasting friendships.
Undergraduate education at the University of Chicago has a reputation for rigor and intellectual excitement. To give a single example, in a 2024 article in The Atlantic about contemporary college students’ low reading levels, the historian Adrian Johns commented that his students were, in fact, still able to read and understand complex materials, since “the University of Chicago is, like, the last bastion of people who do read things.” The University trades on this reputation for rich intellectual life in its advertisements to prospective undergraduates—at least, it did so several years ago when we, the undersigned, applied and were admitted to the University. UChicago’s undergraduate College has a great deal to offer its students, but we would argue that nothing sets it apart, or makes many of its alumni more proud of their unique experience here, than its commitment to challenging, in-depth humanistic inquiry.
We believe that the University cannot, as it were, have its cake and eat it too. The elimination of our small but excellent area studies departments would meaningfully erode an undergraduate experience distinguished by the spirited cultivation of intellectual pursuits. This would be a profound loss: for one thing, of course, it would make the experience of many UChicago undergraduates less personally rewarding. Besides this, it would make the College less likely to produce alumni with the critical thinking skills and wide-ranging curiosity that contribute to innovative work in medicine, public policy, environmental science, and other urgent areas. Such broadly beneficial skills and dispositions are cultivated through study in the humanities at large, but especially through study in the humanities with professors and graduate students who are in possession of world-class expertise and of the institutional support necessary to foster it. Even in the absence of independent, broadly competent area studies departments, some undergraduate instruction in the humanities would no doubt continue at UChicago. But it would be naive to imagine that the elimination of the University’s scholarly competence in a variety of rich literary and cultural traditions would have little impact on the quality of undergraduate intellectual life.
We are aware that the University is in difficult financial straits and has many important priorities; most of us know relatively little about the specifics of the University’s financial challenges. We hope that, in expressing our thoughts here, we can help to convince you that undergraduates—and others across the university—benefit in many ways from our departments of area studies. To drastically reduce these departments and programs, with minimal transparency and with little if any support from the relevant faculty, would be a mistake with a number of unfortunate consequences.
Dear President Alivisatos, Provost Baicker, Dean Nelson, and Trustees, We are undergraduates and alumni of the undergraduate College at the University of Chicago, writing to you in support of the University’s departments of area studies. It has recently become clear, thanks to reporting in the Chi...
