Artist, UO student Inés Beltranena addresses President Scholz on proposed cuts

Jana Thrift (KEPW): Hello, this is Jana with KEPW-LP 97.3 FM in Eugene and simulcasting at KEPW.org. And today we want to talk more about a really important situation that we have going on here in Eugene with the University of Oregon, making some choices to have some pretty drastic cuts.

We have Inés Beltranena, a student from the University here with us today, and I’m just going to kind of let her tell us more about it as she understands it. What is going on over there?

Inés Beltranena (UO): Thank you, Jana. Yeah, I think that the best way I could succinctly describe this and to not mince words is that it is a sudden untransparent—I would not qualify it as democratic—so undemocratic culling of the humanities programs at University of Oregon.

[00:01:02] It’s being done during a summer term and without really honoring the shared governance principles that are central to the mission statement of University of Oregon.

[00:01:13] Jana Thrift: Yeah, that’s crazy. So my understanding is they announced this less than a couple weeks ago and they’re making these decisions this week.

[00:01:24] Inés Beltranena: Yes, that’s my understanding.

[00:01:26] Jana Thrift: Sept. 7, they are going to have made decisions to get rid of whole departments and cut other departments fairly drastically is my understanding, including letting go of tenured professors. (Yes.)

[00:01:45] Tenure is like freedom of speech. (Precisely.) But it seems very interesting to me that they’re removing these particular classes from the curriculum completely, like religious studies, just completely, the whole department gone. How are you dealing with this situation?

[00:02:07] Inés Beltranena: I’m shocked. I’m frightened. Look, I think it’s the lack of transparency that leaves us all wondering. We don’t want to assume the worst of our university and its stewards, right? But the lack of transparency, the suddenness—that is what is raising alarm bells in my system, personally.

[00:02:27] And yeah, the tenureship thing, that’s a dangerous precedent to be setting in terms of the humanities, right? I’m standing here as a student—and thank you for this opportunity. It means a lot to me to try to stand here for my fellow students, many of whom I’ve learned profoundly from.

[00:02:47] I’m an artist by profession. I’ve spent my life defending the humanities, and I’ll defend them forever, but it’s not because there’s some obsolete yet lovely thing I want to preserve. It’s because I see their impact every single day. The clue’s in the name, right? ‘Humanities.’ Those who dismiss it, dismiss their humanity.

[00:03:06] If you want evidence of that, you can look no further than the current federal administration, run by people who dismiss the value, insight, wisdom, warnings of history, and, you know, judge other cultures without speaking any language other than American English, right?

[00:03:20] I would describe humanities as empathetic scholarship. We need to study the Greeks to understand the history of democracy. We need to study history to understand how social structures like democracy have succeeded or failed. We need The Grapes of Wrath to understand the human results of present-day wealth inequalities.

[00:03:39] Statistics, numbers alone, they fail to connect those ideas to the most important, most essential piece: humanness. It’s only through an interdisciplinary approach that those numbers mean anything, right? Like history does repeat itself. It’s cliché because it’s true, and we are in that moment when the wisdom of the humanities is most necessary of all.

[00:04:04] We need religious studies to understand the precipitation of conflicts that are globally affecting us all, especially with both Islamophobia and antisemitism on the rise. And to cut Holocaust studies in the present climate, in a word, I feel, irresponsible, right?

[00:04:18] Surely we are increasingly global citizens. And a crucial and competitive skill set of that sea change is the ability to understand and thus navigate our own differing cultures and languages and our shared histories. And frankly, our shared fates, right?

[00:04:39] A competitive university should be a leader in such a cause. And if this is about money, putting a capitalist aim forward flies in the face of the ancient institution that is the university. That’s not what it’s about.

The utter ignorance of capitalism is that it places a tenuous, fallible, human-invented fabrication like money and the cancerous notion of infinite growth above literally the wisdom of every generation, culture, and civilization that’s come before us. Like, are you kidding me? The absurdity of that to me is so obvious that it’s painful.

[00:05:18] If you want to understand a culture, you understand its past, its politics, its language, its treasured cultural traditions, and you can understand that more—but more deeply—by studying those things, than by any endeavor wherein fiscal gain or numbers alone take the center stage.

[00:05:32] It is ironic to me, this notion that the humanities are a thing of the past. The arts and humanities boldly shine light on facets of society that are corrupt and need our attention. It’s one of the most effective tools with which we are presently fighting. The idea that it’s obsolete is nonsense.

[00:05:58] Humanities are a threat to corruption. History, the arts, they don’t allow us to look away. They keep us accountable, and we already have ample evidence of what undervaluing the humanities does, right: imbalances of power, fascism, racial and economic injustice, cultural erasure, oppression, multiple genocides, and just repeated failure to recognize that inherent human value and dignity are the thing most worth protecting in all of this.

[00:06:27] And it’s precisely because of this that the humanities inform every other discipline. Anthropology needs classics. Neuroscience needs the insights of language and linguistics. The efficacy of social justice aims are lost without ethnic studies. And archeology crumbles without the inclusion of religious studies, folklore, music, and literature.

[00:06:49] The humanities delineate our ethics, they clarify our aims, and they keep our humanness front and center. And the institutions that fail to uphold this integration of the interdisciplinary approach, those I think are the institutions that will resign themselves to becoming relics and lose their relevance.

[00:07:11] And what’s more, I just want everyone to think about the research gaps this would incur and how far behind our university would fall. Cutting humanities is like killing all the bees and then acting surprised when the crops fail and everyone is starving.

[00:07:29] And it doesn’t even make long-term fiscal sense, right? The humanities and the labor of every professor that has devoted their time and brilliant minds to its furtherment is an enormous part of why UO is included in the club of the Big Ten. I mean, I have friends in other states and countries that are jealous of my incredible opportunity to study here at U of O and the reason they cite over and over again: the humanities.

[00:07:55] And I just want to quote a part of UO’s mission statement here. I took this directly from the UO mission statement. ‘As a community of scholars, we help individuals question critically, think logically, reason effectively, communicate clearly, act creatively, and live ethically.’ That is a humanities-based mission statement.

[00:08:20] And look, you know, I was an artist before this degree, and I’ll be an artist afterward. I didn’t come here to get rich. I came to U of O to make my experience in the world richer.

[00:08:33] And it has done that. I am a better and more effective artist because of my time in classics, in folklore, in religious studies, and in archeology at U of O. It’s allowed me to be more informed, inclusive, wide-reaching, meaningful, impactful, and just in the face of injustice, right, to bring that humanist center stage.

[00:08:55] I just wanted to pursue education because of the ripple effect that goes outward from all of the scholars that participate at U of O. We enrich our communities through whatever work we do, whether it makes people money or not. And de-centering this capitalist aim, I know that we have to keep universities alive, but if capitalism is the center…?

[00:09:23] The belief that education should in any way be a capitalistic pursuit flies in the face of the history of what universities are, what they cultivate, and what they protect. It’s knowledge, right? Only the humanities teaches you how to fight for a better economic system. Maybe we’re not learning economics, but we know how to fight for the one that is just.

[00:09:44] Jana Thrift: Yeah. And this list, I just want to say the actual list as we know it, and it has been kind of fluid, right? People don’t completely understand exactly what is happening because of the lack of transparency. But what people are hearing is that entire programs such as Religious Studies, Judaic Studies, Arabic Studies, Holocaust Studies, Classics, German, Scandinavian, and Russian would be eliminated, like, completely eliminated. And then they would downsize Women and Gender Studies, Indigenous Studies, Race, Ethnic Studies, history, math and physics.

[00:10:27] There’s something about the list that seems very targeted. And if we’re questioning whether gender and women’s rights should exist, it seems really important that these things are celebrated, cared about, and expressed and talked about and learned about, like, we need as a community to really be understanding what’s going on.

[00:10:55] So like eliminating religious studies so that people can’t learn about the different religions of the world? That just seems like a lot to lose.

[00:11:09] Inés Beltranena: It feels dangerous to let go of, yeah. And you know, I have seen you U of O stand up for what’s right. I’ve seen them do it. I don’t want to ascribe any ill motives to this, but it doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel safe.

[00:11:26] The list, like you said, feels ominously aligned with other aims in the country, and that’s the only conclusion we can draw because there’s no transparency, right? We only have our imaginations to go on to try and guess what’s happening here. Projected budget deficits is not enough information and doing this behind closed doors…

[00:11:47] Jana Thrift: And there’s so many ways to deal with a deficit that feels more transparent. Like: ‘This is what’s happening to us financially. Can we have faculty input about how to solve these problems, so that it feels inclusive and not exclusive.’

‘Cause it does feel exclusive when it’s like, ‘Oh, we are going to have this top-down decision. We’re going to do it fast. We’re going to do it when nobody is here.’

[00:12:15] And it is true, I don’t want to like think ill, like, there’s some bigger, dark thing going on. But I do know there’s a lot of pressure from the federal government on schools. Boy, we’ve seen that happening across the nation, and, you know, what is going on? It would be nice if they made a statement.

[00:12:36] Inés Beltranena: Yeah, and I would like to encourage other people who probably feel just the way you are articulating you feel, who are listening right now, to please go to StrengthenUO.org. There are very simple options for you to take action there that will take very little effort and time, so that you can reach out and have your voice heard.

[00:12:58] Whether you are at the university or just part of the community that this university is built within, right? That’s an interconnected social ecosystem, right? We need that university to be strong. We love our university, we want to support it, and we want to fight for it. So StrengthenUO.org is a great starting place for everybody who wants to learn a little bit more about this and join us in our fight.

[00:13:25] Jana Thrift: Definitely. And it’s pretty time-sensitive. I think that this week, if you can get more information about this and at that StrengthenUO.org, it was made by the University Academic Union. They made this website and it is really easy to see there, what little is known about what’s going on, and then some opportunities for action to be taken there. So, is there anything else that you would like to share?

[00:14:00] Inés Beltranena: You know what, yes, yes, there is. With your permission, I actually would like to address Karl Scholz directly, our president of the university.

[00:14:10] Jana Thrift: Yes.

[00:14:10] Inés Beltranena: President Scholz, when you were given this post, you weren’t just given the reins to the University of Oregon. You were appointed to the protection of the ancient institution that is the university. We put our trust in you to be our defender and our soldier. And if you gut humanities, you will be sinking the flagship and pride of our state at the precipice of a coming battle.

[00:14:46] Look, regardless of whether these projected budget cuts have been influenced by the federal administration, and dare I say, any fascist agenda, it’s those attempts to devalue humanities and silence dissent that we are becoming complicit in.

[00:15:04] If you do this, you will be actively furthering their aims. I’m not going to mince words. You will be helping fascism.

And if you do it with this utter lack of transparency behind closed doors during summer term, in the hopes that it’s going to go unnoticed without the democratic input and shared governance of those directly affected, not only will you be in express violation of the spirit of the University of Oregon and its mission statement, you yourself will be acting as a microcosm of the erosion of democratic principles in this country.

[00:15:40] If you fire tenured professors upon whose labor the greatness of this university is built, you will be setting a dangerous and precipitous precedent that cannot be undone. I just want to remind you that tenure is not about just job security for scholars. It is a protection against ideological rulers who want to gut and silence any research or discipline with which they disagree or feel threatened.

[00:16:12] It protects us from fascism. And using a loophole to dismantle it behaviorally is too reminiscent of a current political figure than should feel comfortable to anyone involved here.

[00:16:29] And to have gathered some of the most brilliant minds in the country together and not ask for their input in the face of a crisis like this?

[00:16:40] You are standing at the threshold of a pivotal moment, and you have a choice—and as a classics scholar, I’m going to say it like this, just like Prometheus did—to surrender or to seize our fire and birthright and defend us with everything you have.

[00:17:00] Please be better. Please be bigger. Please be more courageous than this. That is what we trusted you to do and be. You are our guardian. Defend us, protect us, strengthen us, and please be a beacon of bravery where others cower. That is your job and sacred duty, and we are putting our trust in you to do that.

[00:17:27] Jana Thrift: Thank you so much. Thank you.

[00:17:30] Inés Beltranena: Thank you. Thank you for this opportunity and thanks for fighting with us. We really appreciate it.

[00:17:35] Jana Thrift: Thank you very much everyone, for listening. This has been an interview with Inés Beltranena, and she is a student at the University of Oregon, and during this very pivotal moment, I hope that anybody listening will go to the website StrengthenUO.org, see what you can do to help with this situation. Thank you everyone.