People aren't talking about this, but UChicago has a 2019 report on graduate education that acknowledged "faculty abuse of power” that was affecting students’ “personal well-being” and “mental health.” For many faculty, facilitating production of quality dissertation research was not a priority.
This is not some well-oiled machine breaking down, despite the mythic way that everyone is talking about UChicago's humanistic research. It's actually a hotbed of academic bullying and incivility and it's produced teaching & research misconduct.
Sounds like an alarming situation - hopefully the pause in intake will enable them to address internal issues. I've only ever come across UC at distance, at Chicago House in Luxor, and folks there were really welcoming. (And the lunch was amazing! The library and gardens were positively dreamlike.)
There was a reason people at Chicago were also not “at Chicago” over some years. The mothership was a hard vessel for some and less so if you were able to stay in another port as it were. There was definitely abuse there, but at the same time, axing the entire humanities isn’t good news for anybody.
As a colleague from Divinity remarked by text, "I’m troubled by that but also think they’ve been such poor vessels for it that I don’t really care." One email mentioned student placement issues etc. in depts w/initial cuts. If that's true & they're like Div in 2010s, they should halt admissions.
I’m in the same spot. I’m sad for stranded students and for disciplines that are already under threat losing more scholars. For the school I can’t say I have much sympathy. At some point there had to be a reckoning
Thank you for saying that. It’s been 25 years and I still don’t quite know how to talk about my own Chicago experience which was both important to me and not great. I may never know and my silence may continue. Regardless, I am sad for others who want to try to make it work who are now under threat.