• Over the past few months, I have spent a lot of time in Salem talking with lawmakers about the urgent need for additional state funding for public higher education. Read my update about the challenges and optimism for the University of Oregon.
• It is my great pleasure to announce that distinguished physicist Jayanth R. Banavar will join the University of Oregon as our next provost and senior vice president. The hiring of Jayanth as the UO’s next chief academic officer is the culmination of a nationwide recruitment that started in August.
• Academic excellence and global engagement go hand in hand at the UO. By continuing our long history of welcoming eager, talented scholars from many countries, we draw global perspectives into our community and enrich the educational experience.
• Like many universities throughout the nation, the University of Oregon is actively engaging in issues of diversity and inclusion on campus and using them as an opportunity for debate, learning, and community-building.
• As many of you may know, the Provost Search Committee has been hard at work for the past five months. The 17-member committee, which includes representatives from virtually all of the UO’s constituencies, has created a position description, built a pool of candidates, and conducted interviews with a wide variety of potential candidates. We are now at the stage of the process where we plan to bring some of them back to Eugene for more intensive interviews and recruitment.
• Over the past couple of months, the University of Oregon’s handling of events associated with Professor Nancy Shurtz’s decision to wear a controversial Halloween costume has garnered significant media attention, both locally and nationally. A number of editorials, letters to the editor, and blog posts have engaged in discussions on the topic. Some of the coverage has been, in my opinion, thoughtful but some has, perhaps not surprisingly, sensationalized and caricatured what is a very serious incident that deeply affected our students and, by extension, our entire university community.
• Last Thursday, Oregon Governor Kate Brown released her budget for the FY 2017–19 biennium and proposed flat funding for all seven public universities. This is good news only in the sense that it could have been a lot worse due to the state’s estimated $1.7 billion budget deficit for the next biennium. The bad news is that flat funding from the state creates significant financial challenges for the UO.
• We, the president, provost, vice provosts, vice presidents, deans and other leadership of the University of Oregon, are committed to creating an inclusive, welcoming, and equitable learning environment for every member of our academic community.
• It may be obvious to many of you, but I want to make crystal clear our commitment to diversity and inclusion. Every person in this university is important and valued. The university’s leadership team stands united in our resolve to do whatever we can to enable every member of our community to flourish and contribute.
• Last week was an incredibly difficult time for our university. The decision of law professor Nancy Shurtz to wear blackface at her Halloween party wounded our community, divided us, and exposed fissures that long existed under the surface. It is now my job as the leader of our school to not only help us heal but, more important, to move us to a demonstrably better place. The challenge for all of us is to recognize that the problem is deep and cannot be fixed with a Band-Aid. Instead, real healing, progress, and transformation will take time, persistence, and generosity of spirit.
