UMass Russian dept is no more?

[ROBERT A ROTHSTEIN]

In response to Alina Israeli's posting of a message about the closing
of the UMass "Russian" Department:
        The University of Massachusetts at Amherst never did have a Russian
department, but the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, which
was created in 1968, has indeed ceased to exist de facto and has only a
minimal continuing de jure existence.
        With the June 1997 retirement of Maurice Levin and the December 1997
retirement of Laszlo Tikos, the department would have been reduced to
three faculty members.  This gave a hostile administration (at the level of
dean and provost) the opportunity to declare the department and its programs
"non-viable" and to propose eliminating both the department and its under-
graduate majors in Russian and in Soviet & East European Studies.  (The
earlier M.A. program in Slavic had long ago been suspended by the department
because of lack of funding from the university.)
        The remaining faculty members decided that the most urgent goal was^M
to maintain educational opportunities for our students, and we were able to
preserve a renamed interdisciplinary major in Russian & East European
Studies.  The major is offered under the aegis of a non-departmental
"Program in Slavic & East European Studies."
        Of the remaining faculty, Joseph Lake continues to teach a three-^M
year Russian language sequence; Laszlo Dienes continues to teach courses in^M
Russian literature, culture and film (inter alia) as a member of the^M
Department of Comparative Literature; and Robert A. Rothstein continues to^M
teach the Polish language and teaches courses in folklore for Comparative^M
Literature and in Yiddish language and culture for the Department of Judaic^M
& Near Eastern Studies.  He also directs the Program in Slavic & East^M
European Studies.
                                Bob Rothstein