Students voice discontent over Russian and Eurasian department closure

By Ani Mecca ’27 

Staff Writer

Hanna Hanneghan ’25 did not expect to take courses about Russia, Eastern Europe, or Eurasia during her time at Mount Holyoke, as someone with no cultural connection or familiarity with the region. Neither had Cat Dippell ’25.  However, a class about the works of Russian playwright Anton Chekov — taught by now retired Professor Peter Scotto — changed that for both students. 

Scotto “was so much more involved and passionate than most other professors,” Dippell recalls. “He would stay after class and give us extra classes in Russian phonetics just for fun.” 

For Hanneghan, the rest of the Russian and Eurasian studies — abbreviated as RES — department echoed this enthusiasm. Once she began taking classes in the department, she found that “[RES] was such a vibrant community … even though the number of people [in the department] was small, it was so much more … active than other departments I was involved in.” 

For several years, the RES department has offered an interdisciplinary study of the literature, politics, history, culture and language of a vast region, including Russia, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Hanneghan ended up graduating in 2025 as a Russian and Eurasian studies and Romance languages and culture double major, while Dipell minored in Russian and Eurasian language and culture. They were some of the last to be able to do so, however; it was disclosed in spring 2023 and after fall 2026, the entire department is to be dissolved.

The announcement was first publicly made at the spring 2023 department teas for German studies and Russian & Eurasian studies. At the semesterly gathering for students and professors, Provost and Dean of Faculty Lisa Sullivan broke the news that both departments would be phased out over the next two academic years. Although current RES majors and minors had been assured that they would be given the resources to continue their programs of study until graduation through June 2027, it was a heartwrenching moment for the gathering.

“Certain professors and students had started tearing up,” Heneghan recalled. 

The officially cited reasons were budgetary constraints and a perceived lack of interest in the department; only 12 RES majors had graduated from Mount Holyoke between 2018 and 2025. Despite the numbers, Dippell criticized the idea that the RES community isn’t as passionate as other departments on campus. “If you talked to any of the students, this was plainly not true,” Dippell said. 

Hannegan gave the example of Mount Holyoke College’s enthusiastic involvement at Yale University’s Spring 2025 Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies Northeast Network Student Conference. There, Mount Holyoke had the largest concentration of students represented per university. 

Since the 2024-25 academic year, students have not had the ability to declare a major in Russian and Eurasian studies, or in one of the three minors offered by the department including language, culture and literature, and Russian and Eurasian studies. Additionally, fall 2023 was the last semester in which elementary Russian courses would be offered at Mount Holyoke. 

One element of the RES department that Hanneghan and Dippell pointed to was the engaging and passionate faculty. Currently, the only professor on staff is Professor Daniel Brooks, who took over teaching literature and language courses in 2022 after Scotto retired the year prior. 

In an interview with Mount Holyoke News, Brooks said that the Russian and Eurasian major program, which requires courses in the Russian language as well as literature and politics, “touches on every aspect of the liberal arts curriculum.” This is crucial for not only the development of students’ critical thinking skills but also their understanding of our current geopolitical reality, especially in light of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 

Courses that delve into the complex languages, histories, and cultures of Russia, Eastern Europe and Eurasia help one “understand why the full-scale invasion is dragging on, [and] the fact that it’s not without precedent.” With the closure of the RES department, the education necessary for Mount Holyoke students to understand this area of the world could be under threat. Furthermore, Brooks’ own standing as a professor is uncertain. “I don’t think I will be in academia for much longer,” he said.

The sunsetting of RES affects more than just the academic department. The Eurasian & Eastern European Cultures Club, formerly the Russian Club, acts as a parallel organization to RES, hosting events such as lectures, dances, craft activities, film screenings and other cultural programming. 

As the child of Russian immigrants, current Club President Sasha Shishov ’26 has found the organization  to be both an affinity space for students from Eastern Europe and Eurasia, as well as an educational space where a diverse range of cultures can be represented and celebrated. This is especially crucial because of Russia’s centuries long cultural and linguistic domination over the region, a history reflected by the club’s name change. 

“The club is acknowledging the lingering effects of 20th century geopolitics,” Shishov said, and it aims to “look harder at questions of colonialism” that have concerned the region in both the past and present. 

However, the future of the club after the discontinuation of RES is uncertain. Not only is the organization affiliated with the department, but Brooks serves as its advisor, and his potential loss of professorship at Mount Holyoke puts the club’s existence in jeopardy.

Several students began a #SaveMHCLanguages campaign, which aimed to bring attention to the discontinuation of both the Russian and German language programs. “I think there was a lot of outrage because it felt that the school was hoping to keep this very quiet; it was done at a department tea, and for that year it was not advertised that the school was cutting the program,” Shishov said. 

The campaign was certainly passionate. Dippell and Hanneghan hand-delivered letters about the importance of preserving the RES department to over 200 faculty, and several alums vowed to cease any donations to the College after the closure. Nonetheless, the decision on whether to discontinue the Russian and Eurasian studies program was put to a faculty vote on May 9, 2023. The results were split by about half, but the motion to dissolve the department won out by a slight majority. 

The College’s decision to axe the Russian and Eurasian studies department followed a slew of similar cuts to language programs over the past ten to fifteen years. The closure of a Russian and Eurasian department will result in the discontinuation of any classes specifically centered around Russian literature and history, while Russian language instruction is already not being offered in spring 2026. 

If Brooks loses his position at the College, it will bring about sadness for many. “He was the best professor I’ve had in my life, for him to no longer be teaching in the [Five College Consortium] would be an immense loss,” Hanneghan said. 

While the closure is definite, Shishov said that she hoped students will show enthusiasm for Russian and Eurasian programming at Mount Holyoke in its last remaining year, whether it is events through the Eurasian & Eastern European Cultures Club,  or by taking part in the last few courses offered by RES next semester. 

“The biggest thing I want is that the [College] feels …that the department cannot be dissolved,” Shishov said. “Daniel Brooks cannot lose his job in such a demeaning and unceremonious way.” 

Shannon Bazir ’27 contributed fact-checking.