(JEWISH GROUP) University of Oregon cuts spare Judaic studies faculty who had raised alarm

A round of layoffs at the University of Oregon that Judaic studies professors had feared would affect their program appears to have spared them entirely.

No tenured or tenure-track faculty or degree programs will be affected as part of the latest round of budget cuts intended to address a $29 million deficit, university administrators announced late Monday. Around 20 unspecified “career faculty” positions will be eliminated, and vacant positions will be left unfilled, but the stated cuts would leave positions including the school’s tenure-track chair in Holocaust studies unchanged.

Requests for comment to the university and to senior Judaic Studies faculty were not immediately returned. The school’s provost told KLCC, the local NPR station, that the school had “prioritized the university’s academic mission and student success,” while the head of the faculty union credited their advocacy for staving off the worst of the cuts.

The news comes after weeks of dire warnings from the school’s faculty, during which they had rallied around what they said were concrete threats to Judaic studies and Holocaust studies and to tenured positions more generally. Their concerns come amid budget cuts at several universities amid pressure on higher education from the Trump administration, which has yanked funding from some schools under the stated goal of fighting antisemitism.

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