After Accepting a $25 Million Gift, UO Lays Off Faculty in new Schnitzer School. Fear of Larger Cuts in Fall.
Within months of the $25 million gift, UO administration enacts disproportionate layoffs of faculty in the new Schnitzer School of Global Studies and Languages.
$25 Million Gift from Jordan Schnitzer and the Harold and Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation
On May 13, 2025, the UO announced a $25 million gift from Jordan Schnitzer and the Harold and Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation to support the new School of Global Studies and Languages in the College of College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) In recognition of the Schnitzers’ generosity, the school has been renamed the Schnitzer School of Global Studies and Languages (SGSL). The goals of the gift are to “support students, recruit and retain top-tier faculty and grow an intellectual hub on [the] Eugene campus.” The Dean of CAS, Chris Poulsen, stated “[The Schnitzers’] investment will be transformative for the new school and will make possible new global experiences and engagement for our students and faculty.”
The gift and the vision for the SGSL are due to visionary leadership and efforts of Professor Aneesh Aneesh, the Executive Director of the School. As part of his vision for the School, Professor Aneesh has sought to enhance research and teaching excellence by “providing awards to attract and retain top-tier faculty in global studies and languages” and “expanding the doctoral student population within the Schnitzer School.” Most B.A. students at the UO are familiar with the School since they fulfill their language requirements through language courses offered through SGSL. The Schnitzer School houses the departments of Global Studies, East Asian Languages and Literatures (Chinese, Korean and Japanese), Germanic and Scandinavian (German and Swedish), Romance Languages (French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish), as well as a number of programs including African Studies (Swahili), Judaic Studies (modern and biblical Hebrew), Middle Eastern and North African Studies (Arabic) and Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies (Russian).
UO Layoffs disproportionate in new Schnitzer School. Impact on largest incoming freshman class.
This summer, the UO laid off a number of career faculty to mitigate projected budget shortfalls. University leadership has announced that there will be a much larger round of layoffs this fall that will include department and program closures and the loss of tenure protections. Given the expressed enthusiasm for the UO’s mission to enhance global engagement, faculty within the Schnitzer School were shocked to learn that five of the eleven career faculty layoffs in CAS sent out this spring targeted language faculty within the Schnitzer School. The following languages have been impacted: Korean (two lines), Portuguese (one line), Swedish (one line), Swahili (one line). Chinese lost two of its four language instructors due to layoffs last year. After the current round layoffs take effect, the UO will no longer offer regular courses in Portuguese, Swedish, or Swahili; the Dean has indicated that he intends to eliminate the Program in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (REEES) and either eliminate the German and Scandinavian Department or significantly reduce the number of its faculty.
Language study is at the core of the Schnitzer school, is the foundation for a nuanced understanding of a culture, and is essential for many types of work in international relations and business. These cuts, and the threat of more cuts in the fall cast doubt on the UO administration’s long-term commitment to global studies. UO leadership has not shared their strategic thinking with departments or faculty concerning the UO’s ability to offer enough courses to incoming students in popular languages including Korean and Spanish, nor have they discussed the impact these cuts will have on majors and graduate programs. This impact will hit the popular Korean sector especially hard as the program shrinks from 4 to 1.6 faculty positions next year.
Layoffs Shrouded in Secrecy. Long term damage to UO’s reputation.
The current low level of state funding apportioned to the UO is not enough to fully subsidize the education of Oregon resident students; the UO has long relied on the higher tuition rates charged international and out-of-state to balance the portion of the budget that supports the university’s academic mission. The incoming 2025-26 cohort is one of the largest incoming classes in the UO’s history; however, the administration is using the decreased ratio of non-resident students in this cohort to justify laying off faculty and eliminating programs. When the University of Wisconsin faced similar budget cuts under Governor Scott Walker in 2015, it managed to shrink its budget without faculty layoffs.
The rushed decision-making process of who to lay off and which programs is shrouded in secrecy and involves minimal to no faculty input. Faculty are understandably concerned that UO leadership has given themselves a three-month period to make decisions that will permanently reshape the university and shrink the educational possibilities for Oregon’s students when the process of determining whether a faculty member should be awarded tenure takes a full year and involves multiple levels of faculty input.
UO leadership seems oblivious to the reputational damage the UO will suffer as a result of their decisions to layoff loyal faculty and staff and close programs as their first and seemingly only response to what may be a temporary budget shortfall. There has been no discussion of increasing fundraising and lobbying efforts to fund the UO’s academic mission, furloughs, targeted pay cuts of the most highly paid faculty and administrators, or planned downsizing through retirements to protect the core teaching and research functions of the university. The shredding of tenure protections and laying off of some of our best teaching professors will not only have a chilling effect on academic freedom and faculty morale, but it will also make it harder for the UO to hire the best faculty in future searches. Equally chilling is that the disproportionate targeting of layoffs within the new Schnitzer School of Global Studies and Languages signals donors that even as the UO is happy to accept large gifts, it is not invested in carrying out the long-term budgetary and academic planning needed to realize the full promise of these gifts.