What is to become of our school?

(Re: “Manhattan faculty has ‘no confidence’ in prez,” Feb. 1)

To the Editor:

Beginning in 1958 I served Manhattan College for 50 years, variously as a history professor and chair of the department, speaker of the College Senate and the Promotion & Tenure Committee, founder of its Holocaust Resource Center (renamed the Holocaust, Genocide, and Interfaith Center), chaired the Steering Committee for Middle States accreditation 1999-2001, led the follow up body on the viability of the college’s Graduate Programs, and numerous other appointments, committees, and responsibilities.

I witnessed the college come of age by its adoption of the PhD standard and the AAUP principle of Tenure. We had our crises, dire enough that Brother President Thomas Scanlon sold the library’s collection of rare books among other painful expedients, so much so that I mockingly quipped to students on Friday afternoons, “Take everything home with you because on Monday you are likely to find the entrance blocked with a sign reading ‘Closed for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy Proceedings.’”

But there was no decline and fall, and it was Brother Thomas’ proud boast that in his long reign not one faculty member was dismissed out of financial exigency. In those years, budgets were read, assessed, and acted upon.

Through the years I was a productive scholar, writing articles and reviews, editorials and letters to the editor, books written and contributed to, books edited and co-edited; giving talks and attending conferences; reading ever deeper in my specialized field and pursuing new areas of research, promoting Catholic/Christian – Jewish relations and combatting antisemitism.

I retired from teaching in 1999 and was succeeded by Dr. Jeff Horn, one of the featured faculty members in your illuminating article. 

I write in profound sadness and intense anger. Jeff is the most distinguished member of the history department by whatever criteria one applies, as he is one of the most accomplished members of Manhattan’s faculty, as he is one of the most eminent scholars in his professional field of historical studies and publication.

Few colleagues equal Jeff in the honor and recognition he brings to the college. But he is not to be allowed to serve Manhattan and finish out a wonderfully productive career of 40 or 50 years, or to enjoy the tremendous pleasure of returning students, come back to relate how he prepared them for successful careers.

Rather, Jeff is being cruelly and arbitrarily dismissed at the age of 58, when landing a comparable position elsewhere in today’s America is as remote as one of the galaxies revealed by the Webb telescope.

Such inhumanity is radically inconsistent with every legal principle and ethical concept that the Christian Brothers and Manhattan College have stood for from their founding. 

We are told suddenly that the College has a $14 million debt. How so? Last fall I attended President Milo Reverso’s reception for donors, a wonderfully sumptuous affair in an exquisite setting, made the more so by the pleasure of meeting former students sharing their triumphs and recalling their undergraduate years.

We heard a glowing report of the college’s condition, multimillion-dollar awards and grants received, the picture anything but that of an impending financial crisis. 

Given the crisis, what is the cause? Why was it not detected and acted upon in time? Over the last decade, did not the then president and trustees read the budget. Are they not — legally, financially, and morally — responsible? and punishable in city, state, or federal courts of law?

President Riverso was a trustee before becoming president, doubling his responsibility. And as in most instances of justice denied: those most responsible suffer the least. 

And what is the remedy that looms before us? Principally, it seems, to take a wrecking ball to the School of Liberal Arts; fire its most distinguished Humanities faculty on the new precept — tailored for the occasion — of “First in, First out;” bludgeon the principle of Tenure with that weapon of financial exigency; reduce departments to skeletons.

Who in their right mind will major in history when the department numbers a pathetic three members? Over the cliff we go, turning a liberal arts college into a bevy of trade schools or technical institutes.

Alas, Brother Casimir Gabriel Costello, chair of the history department and dean of the college when you hired me in 1958 and articulated Manhattan’s purpose: that every student, no matter what school you are enrolled in, or what profession or specialization you prepare for, will graduate with a liberal arts education.

Cas Gabe, as we affectionately called him, is honored by an annual lecture celebrating the liberating arts and sciences: I anticipate a future lecture marking their demise at Manhattan College.

What to do? Donate hard cash to GoFundMe for the legal defense of academic tenure at Manhattan College.

Frederick Schweitzer, PhD

Professor Emeritus of
History