Deborah Nelson, Dean of the Division of the Arts & Humanities and Helen B. and Frank L. Sulzberger Professor of English and the College 

What is the scope of work in the arts and humanities at UChicago?
UChicago’s research and teaching in the arts and humanities is conducted at a scale and level of impact with very few peers. The Division of the Arts & Humanities is home to more than 200 tenure-track faculty members and 200 specialists in language teaching and many forms of arts practice—one of the largest arts and humanities faculties in the world. The division teaches 50 languages or more in any given year. In 2025, a third of all undergraduate degrees at UChicago included a major or minor in the arts and humanities. 

How is UChicago’s Arts & Humanities Division planning for the future?
During the summer of 2025, more than 50 faculty and staff within the division began working to plan for the long-term vitality of the arts and humanities at UChicago. This faculty-led work has generated ideas to help us discuss ways to ensure our academic community can continue to produce the kinds of humanistic knowledge that is essential to engaging the pressing issues we face as a species, such as: How can cultural and historical insights inform how we navigate the impacts of climate change? How does our understanding of language shape artificial intelligence, and how does AI change understandings of language, truth and other concepts at the core of the humanities? And even first-order questions about how we live together in a pluralistic society with shared but limited resources, in a global milieu with increasingly fluid boundaries. These are questions our students want to pursue, too. 

What is the status of the faculty-led planning work that began in summer 2025? 
I have shared with all faculty and staff within the Division of the Arts & Humanities the reports produced by the faculty-led committees convened during the summer of 2025. The findings and recommendations of those reports have provided a starting point for ongoing discussions and long-term planning within the division and with university leadership.  

What role does faculty governance have in these decisions? 
Faculty in the Division have led the committees from the start. Faculty governance structures will continue to have their historically appropriate role in deliberations and decisions that affect the Division. 

Is the Arts & Humanities Division pausing admissions to some PhD programs for academic year 2026-2027? 
Yes, this is a one-time pause based on the strong recommendation of the faculty-led PhD Program Committee convened during the summer of 2025, as well as the near-unanimous agreement of department chairs. The pause affects only new admissions for academic year 2026-2027 in most doctoral programs within the Division—except for Philosophy and Music Composition and Sound Practices. The one-year pause will allow us to navigate the immediate uncertainties of the coming academic year, as well as further research the historical evolution of our PhD training, the changing landscape of higher education, and the best frameworks to reinvest in impactful doctoral training that builds on our historical excellence. We remain wholly committed to the full support of our current and future PhD students.  

How does the PhD admissions pause affect the future of doctoral training in humanistic fields at UChicago? 
The one-year pause will provide time for more robust discussion about the goals of PhD education in the Arts & Humanities. Drawing on UChicago’s historical strength of training field-defining scholars, we are well positioned to help shape and refine the future of doctoral and graduate education in the arts and humanities. The division is working with a coalition of other universities and organizations, including the American Council of Learned Societies, to rigorously examine how best to prepare and mentor graduate students for future careers not only as eminent scholars within the academy, but also as leaders across the broad range of arts, educational, and cultural institutions that positively impact public life, and that require expertise and advanced training in humanistic research.  

Is UChicago continuing to invest in the arts and humanities? 
Yes, in fact the University has expanded its subsidization of the Division of the Arts & Humanities. Over the past 30 years, the Division of the Arts & Humanities has added three new departments and four programs and committees, in addition to multiple interdisciplinary research centers. PhD students in the Division of the Arts & Humanities are now fully funded during their training, a substantial expense the University heavily subsidizes. The University has increased its investment in arts and humanities faculty, and has invested strategically in the Division’s physical spaces for research and teaching—including the Mansueto Library and the Logan Center for the Arts.  

Is it true that the arts and humanities are inexpensive to support? 
Producing work in the Arts & Humanities at the scale and level of impact that happens at UChicago requires extensive resources and does not pay for itself. The University substantially subsidizes these departments, and invests heavily in research by faculty and students (both graduate and undergraduate), as well as the more intimate seminars and workshops that are common across the arts and humanities. PhD students do not pay tuition, and undergraduate tuition does not cover these expenses.  As at every major research university, the net cost of supporting Arts & Humanities is substantial because faculty research, PhD education, and related activities require resources while generating relatively little external grant support or other revenue streams. That said, the University invests in these fields because they are vital to our academic mission. That’s going to continue. 

How will UChicago continue to support smaller, less popular programs, including languages? 
The Arts & Humanities Division is working to sustain 100% of the scope of research and teaching in the Division, and to do so in a sustainable way. Language teaching, as an example, is work that supports the research program of faculty across the entire university. We will always support language training for research—and do so at a scale with very few peers.  

Are you hopeful about the future of the arts and humanities at UChicago? 
Absolutely. I also understand the anxiety people feel about change. As the dean, there is nothing more important to me than sustaining the luminous excellence of the arts and humanities at UChicago. Our only choice is to approach this time with a sense of determination, inspiration, and hope. I believe leaders in higher education need to help students and scholars pursue immensely ambitious work—for the future of the humanities in higher education, but more importantly, for the future of humanity everywhere. We can no longer thrive on nostalgia for an imagined golden age. While UChicago has produced many formidable figures in the arts and humanities over the last 133 years, we should remember that they changed ways of thinking only by refusing to accept the existing order of things. This is a time to take up that challenge again.