Last Wednesday College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Dean Paul D'Anieri revealed possible CLAS budget cuts which, if implemented, would reduce funding for the Department of Religion at UF by 65 percent. This would leave the department with a mere four faculty members and would likely end the graduate program.
As graduate students from the UF religion department, we whole-heartedly concur with his vision that a liberal arts education strives to change lives and to "ask the hard questions." As students, researchers, teachers and teaching assistants, we can attest that our classes foster a space for undergraduates from across disciplines to ask "hard questions" about religious diversity. These questions will be invaluable to their futures as citizens of a global society. In order to continue to offer such a space and to contribute to the interdisciplinary relationships, we have forged within the university and beyond. It is crucial for us to retain a strong religion department.
The dean made clear that the proposed cuts are partially based upon the small number of religion majors. This criterion overlooks the wealth of resources that our department offers the students who enroll in our classes as non-majors. Our students are future scholars, but they are also future diplomats, lawyers, public administrators, scientists, health care workers, teachers and engineers. Our introductory classes, such as Introduction to Islam, American Religious History or Environmental Ethics, allow students to engage in lively, intelligent debate as they critically analyze the complex and ever-changing place of religion in human life. They leave our classes better equipped to live, work and thrive within a globalized world. As the comments we receive on teaching evaluations can attest, our courses have changed lives.
Our students are bridge builders, forging lasting relationships within UF and on the national and international scene. Combined, we have made 13 presentations at international conferences and 98 presentations at the national or local level. We have also been published in 72 academic publications. In addition, we have been awarded 13 outside grants, fellowships and scholarships. Our graduate program, which is split into three unique tracks - Religions of Asia, Religion in the Americas and Religion and Nature - has influenced or served as an example for other graduate programs, such as the University of Texas at Austin.
We have worked with religion faculty, along with faculty from the School of Building Construction and Design, School of Forest Resources and Conservation, the departments of political science, agriculture, music, world languages, history and anthropology, the McKnight Brain Institute, the Harn Museum of Art, the Water Institute, Florida State University and Fordham University, to secure several large grants and research projects, such as a $300,000 National Science Foundation grant and a Ford Foundation grant. We have also helped faculty form organizations, such as the Center for the Study of Hindu Traditions and the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature & Culture, which has a global membership of over 300. We have given lectures or taught classes at venues around Gainesville, such as the public schools. Students have also served other departments, such as Latin American Studies, by developing and teaching new cross-listed courses. Dismantling the religion department would sever these ties that make an invaluable contribution to our university's vitality.
The dean has suggested that students can be educated about religion by other departments. Many of us have worked with scholars in other departments whose research deals with religion, and we have the utmost respect for their endeavors. Nonetheless, we maintain that a strong religion department is crucial to the strength of the entire university.
Gaining skills over years of having religion as our central focus, we make a deep-reaching and rigorous analysis of the diverse ways that people negotiate their relationships with one another and with the nonhuman world in light of their ultimate concerns. We offer a comprehensive approach that grapples with radically diverse ways of thinking and being the world - as expressed through sacred texts and everyday, embodied cosmologies - and explores how these ways of thinking and being derive from and play out in collective action. While we do not relegate religion to a realm divorced from human life, neither do we reduce it to a simple calculus of economics, politics or neuroscience.
When religion enters the public sphere, there is often a burst of media interest. Religion appears with visible force at particular moments in history and otherwise lurks behind the scenes. The academic study of religion makes visible the continual and commonplace presence of religion in multiple arenas of life.
Eleanor Finnegan, Leah Sarat, Clinton Bland, Bridgette O'Brien, Sean O'Neil and Caleb Simmons contributed to the column. The above has been agreed upon by all 31 graduate students from the UF's Department of Religion.
