I am currently chair of the philosophy department at the University of Utah. I have taught at “the U” for 32 years. We are a flagship but not an elite university; we admit 89 percent of applicants. Our students range from quite unprepared to extremely capable. For the most part, I have loved my job and have put my heart and soul into it. I have always been proud to be on this faculty helping students at all levels of academic readiness acquire skills in reading, writing, speaking and reasoning that enhance their lives and prepare them for virtually any job. But recently, my pride has evaporated and been replaced with feelings of grief and shame.
This year—my first as chair—has seen profound upheaval. In January 2024, shortly before my term began, the State Legislature passed an anti-DEI bill, prohibiting, among other things, offices and programs related to diversity, equity or inclusion. Administrators were required to purge these three words from university websites and other documents, such as RPT—retention, promotion and tenure review—guidelines, and the university administration interpreted the law as requiring that the Women’s Resource Center, the Black Cultural Center and the LGBT Resource Center be shuttered.
The state has also imposed a “bathroom bill” requiring trans university students to use locker rooms aligning with their sex assigned at birth, has banned Pride flags in public spaces (and in faculty offices if they can be seen through a window), and now requires faculty to post their syllabi in a publicly searchable database. It also prohibits university presidents from taking a stand on any issue that does not bear upon the “mission, role or pedagogical objectives” of the institution. And finally, as the coup de grâce for academic freedom and faculty expertise, it has funded and established the Center for Civic Excellence at Utah State University, mandating that all students take general education courses on the topics of Western civilization and the rise of Christianity. The law establishing the center identifies it as a pilot program to be rolled out to other Utah universities in the future.
Then there is the state of Utah’s version of the national campaign against alleged “waste, fraud and abuse.” Recently passed laws dictate the process by which all post-tenure reviews of faculty must be conducted, curtail shared governance and cut state funds to all Utah public institutions by 10 percent ($60.5 million). Universities can have the funds “reallocated” if they use them for high-demand, high-wage majors. As a result, we lost our History and Philosophy of Science major, which drew some of our best students, many of them double majoring in STEM subjects and working toward careers in medicine and public health. To be clear, eliminating this major will reduce opportunities for students while producing no savings whatsoever; offering it requires no additional staff, advisers or courses beyond what is already in place for our philosophy major. These funding cuts also mean that tenure-line faculty in my department will receive a zero percent raise this year.
In addition to the state’s actions, the upper administration—in seeming alignment with Facebook’s motto of “move fast and break things”—has instituted so many changes in such a short time it is hard to keep track. It abruptly revamped the advising system, brought four colleges under the umbrella of a Colleges and Schools of Liberal Arts and Sciences in a “shared services” arrangement, and keeps rolling out new “student success initiatives.” Whether these changes are wise or not, the pace at which they were made imposed a crushing amount of (mostly stultifying) work on deans and department chairs. Aside from refereeing a few manuscripts for journals, I have not read a piece of philosophy since I became chair, much less written one. In the midst of this, the dean of my college, a strong supporter of philosophy, resigned in the middle of the fall semester and was replaced by someone from outside our college, essentially putting us in receivership.
While all this is happening, my youngest child, who is queer, is deciding where to attend college. He applied to the University of Utah, where he was admitted to the Honors College and received a scholarship. But how can I send him here? I fear for his safety no matter where he lives in our current hate-filled political climate, but still I hesitate to subject him to the environment on my own campus. I will likely incur a hefty bill, then, so he can attend a university out of state.
I had more or less come to terms with this constraint, and was also managing to persevere in my job, when something happened that finally took the wind out of my sails: The president of the university announced, to the surprise of faculty, that returned missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will be eligible to receive up to 12 college credits for their service to the church.
I am galled by what all this says about who matters at my university. While students like my child can’t even have a designated room on campus to hang out in with like-minded others—and while the main symbol reminding us of the existence and dignity of students like him is banned from public spaces—returned LDS missionaries, who have an entire institute across from campus dedicated to their spiritual support, can get a full semester of credit, at a greatly reduced cost, essentially for going door to door trying to persuade people to join their church. This set of priorities is so wrong-headed that it verges, for me, on surreal. And yet the administration sees no irony or hypocrisy in naming its Office of Student Experience “U Belong.”
Soon I will be hosting a retirement party for a wonderful colleague who joined the faculty one year before I did. In another era, I would have been sad to see him go but glad to be continuing in what I regard as my vocation. Now I feel nothing but envy. It is time for me, too, to retire, but, alas, that is not an option, because I have four years of out-of-state tuition to pay.