Philip Lewis, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University, and Biddy Martin, senior associate dean of the college, today (Dec. 3, 1998) released the following statement about the Latino Studies Program:

Throughout the fall semester, the deans of Arts and Sciences have struggled with unrest in the Latino Studies Program (LSP). Over the summer, we had made tentative plans to enlist Professor Larry Moore, the Newman Professor of American Studies, to serve as acting director of the program for one year and to lead another search, based in the program rather than in a particular department, for a permanent director.

Professor Moore conditioned his acceptance of this role on the approval of faculty and students in the programs constituency. When, at the start of the semester, we received demands from students calling for different arrangements, he withdrew from the position. Since that time, Dean Biddy Martin has handled routine administrative decisions in the LSP office, and the programs veteran administrative assistant, Mart Dense, has provided outstanding service while looking after its day-to-day activities. The fall-term curriculum of a half-dozen courses has included two courses given by visiting professor Edna Acosta-Beln; the spring-term curriculum of seven courses will include two by visiting professor Sandra Saldvar-Hull and one by Professor Maria Cristina Garcia, a new associate professor who is joining the Department of History in January. As it has during its four years in the college, the LSP is continuing to provide support for extracurricular activities in the sphere of Latino Studies and program funding to the Latino Living Center.

Throughout the fall term, the college administration has been confronted by students protesting the slow pace at which the LSP has developed and the absence of a regular director for the program. We have acknowledged that the students do have legitimate complaints:

with the exception of one search that yielded a director who was a tenured member of the Cornell faculty, the program has suffered through a long history of unsuccessful directors searches and has had to make do with leadership from a series of interim directors;

as an interdisciplinary program in the humanities and social sciences, the LSP has benefited from faculty appointments in literature (2), history, and anthropology, but still lacks full-time faculty in such critically vital social science fields as political science and sociology.

The debate between, on the one hand, the college administration and, on the other hand, the protesting students and faculty members who have supported the protesters demands is not about whether we need to solve these problems, but about how to go about it. Strengthening the academic program in Latino Studies is a priority for the college. The deans direct involvement in the conduct of program business and in searches (a commitment of time and effort no other program or department has received during the past decade) since 1994 is clear evidence of the special importance and care we have accorded to the LSP.

To some extent, this terms differences of opinion between the administration and some groups in the LSP community involve conflicting views on the recruitment strategy that is appropriate and likely to succeed; to some extent, the disagreements appear to result from dissatisfaction with the principles and procedures that the college uses in organizing and operating its interdisciplinary programs. In addition, conflicts among the faculty associated with the program over program direction and composition, and the involvement of students in those conflicts, have made it impossible to constitute an advisory board that does not set one group against another. Given the history of unsuccessful searches and an atmosphere in the program marked both by expressions of student discontent and by dissension among faculty members, conducting a search for a long-term director would be a recipe for further frustration.

While the demands conveyed to us by the students seem incompatible with the conditions needed for successful recruitment, the fact remains that the policies and principles by which we operate and the persistent conflicts among faculty appear to be the more immediate sources of the present impasse. The two college procedures or principles that have been central factors in the difficulties of the LSP are the requirement that faculty members who are affiliated with programs be appointed in one of the academic departments (thus that any search entail cooperation of the program with a department) and the principle, applicable to all of our programs, that the faculty who have scholarly credentials and teach courses in the academic field should be the membership corps from which any advisory board or executive committee is drawn. We believe the Arts and Sciences faculty supports these policies overwhelmingly and for sound reasons. We are, in any case, committed to upholding them. Since antagonisms among faculty associated with Latino Studies have

continued and since students have been drawn into those conflicts, we are forced to acknowledge that cooperative oversight of the program by a board composed of faculty members associated with Latino Studies is not realistic at this point.

The stalemate we have experienced since the students demands were presented to us has left us without an interim director, without a directors search, and without an advisory board working to assist the programs development. Having concluded, after exchanges with the concerned parties, that agreement on a mutually acceptable advisory board is unlikely, we have undertaken to make arrangements that should, we believe, demonstrate our commitment to the program and our good faith in attempting to achieve some progress this year.

The primary arrangement we have initiated stems from a directors search conducted year before last by the LSP and the Department of Government. The search committee made up of Professors Thomas Holloway (chair), Theodore Lowi, Anna Marie Smith, Vilma Santiago-Irizarry, and Helena Viramontes unanimously recommended a candidate strongly supported by the Latino Studies program (including students who participated in the search), Professor Pedro Cabán. Though the appointment did not materialize at that time, a number of faculty members and students have encouraged us over the past year and a half to continue to pursue his candidacy. Dr. Cabán, who has years of experience as director of a successful interdisciplinary department that focused on the Latino experience at Rutgers, has agreed to an appointment as a visiting professor and as director of the program for the academic year 1999-2000. His principal responsibility for the year will be to assist us with the development of the Cornell LSP; he will also teach a political science course that will contribute to the programs curriculum.

Under Dr. Cabáns leadership, we hope it will be possible to overcome the conflicts among participants in the program that have contributed to the problems we are experiencing this year and to establish plans for the programs future. Dr. Cabán has also accepted an appointment for the spring semester 1999 as adjunct professor and will make several visits to campus in order to work with us and with responsible students and faculty to prepare the groundwork for a transition to a new phase in the development of Latino Studies at Cornell. Dr. Cabán will visit campus next week and will talk with concerned faculty and students, as well as with members of the college and university administrations.

Beyond the move to appoint Dr. Cabán, the college has authorized searches in three departments English, Government, and Sociology that could lead to the appointment of new faculty members capable of contributing to the curriculum of the LSP. This, too, we believe, should be understood as a demonstration of our support for the program, and for those who have questioned the commitment of the college and university to provide adequate resources to the LSP, it should substantiate our consistent assertions that this program has in fact benefited from generous institutional support.

We have sought and received approval for our course of action from the chairs of Anthropology, Asian Studies, Astronomy, Biochemistry, Ecology and Systematics, Genetics, Neurobiology and Behavior, Plant Biology, Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Classics, Economics, English, German Studies, Government, History, History of Art, Linguistics, Mathematics, Modern Languages, Music, Near Eastern Studies, Philosophy, Physics, Psychology, Romance Studies, Science and Technology Studies, Sociology, Theater, Film, and Dance.

Note: after its initial posting on the web on 12/3/98, this statement was corrected and updated on 12/4/98.