Guest View: Don’t gut the Dewey Center

I am an alumnus of SIUC’s Ph.D. program in philosophy. I am writing to urge you to continue full support for the Center for Dewey Studies. I understand that the center has been asked to prepare a budgetary plan for a reduction of its support by 50 percent. Were that reduction to be applied, it would incapacitate the center. That would be a truly terrible mistake.

[featured-image link=”https://www.academia.edu/12126269/Dont_Gut_the_Dewey_Center” link_single=”https://www.academia.edu/12126269/Dont_Gut_the_Dewey_Center” single_newwindow=”true” alt=”This is the scan of my op-ed in The Southern Illinoisan, titled ‘Don’t Gut the Dewey Center.'”]

The Center for Dewey Studies is one of the jewels of SIUC. As I said in a recent interview with the Daily Egyptian, it is simply the best resource in the world of its kind. John Dewey’s work remains deeply important. Presently, Penguin Books is in contract negotiations with me to release a collection of Dewey’s public writings, in part because of help I received from the center, its director, and its relationship with the SIU Press. Dewey was America’s greatest public philosopher, and next year marks the 100th anniversary of his master work, Democracy and Education. There is also a burgeoning movement in public philosophy for which Dewey is the exemplar to whom people will be looking with increasing interest. This is not the time to cut support for the center, but to increase it.

The Center for Dewey Studies is one of the premier programs at SIUC. It’s the reason I came to SIU for graduate school when other places were making me competing offers. SIUC is special for its unique strengths in American philosophy, and it is known around the world for that reputation. The central reasons for that reputation are the work of the Center for Dewey Studies and the faculty’s remarkable strengths in that area, bolstered by the center. Compared with any other element of a university campus, the Center for Dewey Studies must be by an incredible margin the very cheapest initiative of profound excellence at the university. It would be immensely unwise to cripple the center with drastic cuts, when they are down to the bare budgetary essentials to keep afloat.

Please preserve this cherished resource at SIUC, which fundamentally depends on the Dewey Center staff. Materials do not preserve, catalog, edit, or collect themselves. The delicate and important work of the Center for Dewey Studies is priceless, even though the requested price tag is so small. The proposed savings would be minuscule already for a major research university. It cannot make sense to debilitate a remarkable center of excellence for a $20,000 savings at an institution whose operating budget exceeds $430 million. As you consider what is best for the university, the only sensible steps forward must include serious support for its truly excellent programs, like the Center for Dewey Studies.