Brandeis Panel Proposes Cuts in Hebrew and Yiddish as Part of Restructuring Plan

A faculty panel at Brandeis University, a nonsectarian Jewish-sponsored research institution, recommended today that it terminate its undergraduate major in Hebrew language and literature, as well as its undergraduate minor in Yiddish and East European Jewish culture, as part of efforts to deal with a multimillion-dollar long-term budget gap by “reducing academic commitments in the arts and sciences,” according to a statement posted today by the Brandeis 2020 Committee. Those programs would be merged into the existing program in Near Eastern and Judaic studies. The panel’s suggestions, which also include terminating the theater department’s graduate design program and cutting back or eliminating other programs, will be reviewed by various faculty and student groups and then considered by the university’s board in March.

The cuts will be carried out over a number of years and will eventually save the university $3.8-million a year, Adam Jaffe, dean of arts and sciences, told The Boston Globe.

The proposals follow by a year the university’s announcement that it would close its art museum and sell the art collection, a plan that drew sharp criticism, a quick if partial retraction of the concept, and a lawsuit. “While these proposals represent diminution of some important aspects of our mission,” the committee said, they were necessary to safeguard Brandeis’s future.