Liberal Arts at Pacific: A Crumbling Institution
by Students and Alumni of Phi Alpha Theta
Pacific is California’s oldest university. We have a storied history, stretching back over 170 years. Yet even over our long history, our core promise has remained unchanged: to provide students with a high-quality, comprehensive education to make sure they are prepared with the knowledge and skills they need to live a fulfilling life.
However, a concerning trend has emerged within the school we attend. Pacific is systematically weakening all areas that do not directly support the revenue-intense pre-professional and professional programs. Majors outside those pre-professional programs then become deemphasized: serving more and more as merely GE classes for more lucrative, larger programs of study. The comprehensive liberal arts experience promised by Pacific is fading away.
As history majors, we can see some of the impacts this is having on our department in particular. Currently, the history department is undergoing one of the most dramatic changes that it has seen in a long while. After the 2021-22 academic year, Dr. William Swagerty, a scholar of Native American and environmental history, retired. His position will no longer be filled. As such, Pacific’s Stockton campus which is constructed atop what was once a Yokut village, no longer offers classes on Native American history and society.
This year, our contemporary European history professor, Dr. Andreas Agocs, is leaving; his contract is ending. Courses on such topics as WWI, WWII, Europe after 1945, and the Holocaust might no longer be taught, as there is no one else in the department with such expertise in those topics. Students will no longer have the opportunity to learn about the transformational changes that occurred in Europe and across the world in the 19th and 20th centuries (issues which are vital to a comprehensive understanding of economic, cultural, and geopolitical issues affecting us in the present day).
These classes serve as some of the most popular GE classes that the history department currently offers, and it will no longer be able to serve students with the history classes they have come to expect.
Besides that, the removal of our contemporary European historian presents the department with new issues. The current structure of the major is such that all history students must take a class in contemporary European history in order to graduate; removing said class options without presenting any sort of alternative prevents us from graduating in a timely manner. Removal also significantly hinders the comprehensiveness of our history degree. As a result, the history department is currently in the process of revising the major requirements, in part so that future history students can complete the major without the requirement.
The history department has had a role (and a tenure track line) for a contemporary European historian for years. In 2012 when Dr. Gesine Gerhard, the department’s previous professor of contemporary European history, was promoted to assistant dean of COP, we transitioned away from having an open spot for such a historian. Yet those classes still needed to be taught, so Dr. Andreas Agocs was hired on a yearly contract to fill in for Dr. Gerhard. Later, in 2018, Dr. Gerhard was hired to serve as a dean at another university. Instead of hiring Dr. Agocs to the tenure position, the College chose to keep him on his yearly contract (which he has now occupied for over a decade). Now, the Dean of the College of the Pacific has made the decision that a Contemporary European historian is redundant and unnecessary, and has chosen not to renew his contract. Our history department is weaker because of it.
In addition, this continual renewing of a yearly contract is in violation of the spirit of the decisions made by the faculty governance of the University. Faculty voted to move to a system in which professors, after working here for three years, should be hired full-time to a tenured role as an assistant professor, instead of continuing to be reappointed as an adjunct faculty member. However, the university has gotten around this limitation by renaming the position title. Instead of serving as an instructor, Dr. Agocs serves as a lecturer, a title change that means that the university can follow the letter of the law and ignore the spirit.
This entire experience underscores the importance of the tenure system. The tenure system protects professors from termination without due process and just cause, ensuring that other faculty members and a broad array of people are consulted. There is a growing trend toward reducing the number of tenured faculty and replacing them with adjunct or non-tenure-track faculty. Without any sort of protections, a faculty member can be fired at any time. They have no security of position, reduced independence, and less freedom in their academic research.
\From their actions, it appears that the current administration is set in their goal of weakening the liberal arts education. Their actions within the history department deem the teaching of the human rights abuses committed against Native Americans and Jewish people immaterial. Yet the damages to the Pacific’s educational promise are not isolated to history.
This situation is repeated, again and again, throughout the College, especially in the departments that aren’t as profitable for the University. A new question arises: what is the goal of the university? Is it merely to prepare students for a career, without encouraging them to develop a greater understanding of the world and pursue their sense of curiosity? Or is it to offer a wide variety of opportunities for learning, encouraging students to follow their interests as they prepare for more than just their future job but a fulfilling life? And if we want our university experience to be more than just career preparation, we have to ask ourselves: is Pacific living up to that ideal?