E. Gordon Gee says he’s not afraid to walk the campus of West Virginia University these days, unpopular president or not.

“I am not someone who has fear,” he said. ”What I do fear is whether or not I’m doing the right thing, especially in the golden years of my life.”

In an interview with the Tribune-Review on Monday, Gee, 79, said he is convinced he is making the right moves.

But there has been a furor on campus and across the nation over program cuts that, among other things, would eliminate the department that teaches world languages.

In less than three weeks, WVU’s board of governors will vote on campuswide recommendations advanced by Gee that — depending on your viewpoint — will either lessen enrollment and financial woes of a struggling university or gut what it means to be a land grant institution that prepares students for careers globally.

The stakes grew even higher late Monday with word that the university’s Faculty Senate office has received a petition seeking a University Assembly meeting next month to consider a vote of no confidence in Gee and a freeze on what WVU is calling its “Academic Transformation” process.

Gee is betting that he will be proven right and insists that the same pressures face flagship universities across the nation.

He suggests he is in the hot seat because he is acting now to get ahead of the problem.

“In your own state, Penn State is struggling mightily with their deficit, right? Rutgers is struggling. Minnesota. Everyone is struggling with it, and everyone is doing it differently,” Gee said. “We happen to take the view that we’re going to take our medicine, like cod liver oil, and we’re going to take it quick and fast and get it behind us.”

Gee said he knows the nation is watching what WVU does. He chafes that so much attention focuses on languages when the university’s broader restructuring touches areas from law to math to engineering, and has impacted staff perhaps the hardest.

“I’ve been doing this longer than anyone in this country. I’ve signed more diplomas than anyone living in America,” Gee said. “I take a lot of pride in that. Have I made mistakes along the way? Absolutely. And I paid for it.”

He points to support from entities including bond agencies that indicate WVU is doing the right thing.

Still, academic organizations and individuals from across the country have lined up to say the opposite, that Gee is making a serious mistake by eliminating programs in Spanish, Italian, French, German, Russian, Arabic and Chinese.

“I can tell you that no other state flagship university has forsaken language education for its students or made the kinds of cuts to the humanities that WVU is undertaking,” stated a letter to Gee from the New York City-based Modern Language Association and its executive director, Paula Krebs.

The recommended cuts, announced Aug. 11, would discontinue 32 of WVU’s 338 majors and reduce faculty ranks in Morgantown by 7% — 169 positions — to confront enrollment losses and adapt to shifting student demand. The board is to vote on Sept. 15.

The university, which did not meet pre-pandemic growth projections to 40,000 students by 2020, faces a $45 million structural deficit in its budget.

Its enrollment systemwide stands at about 27,000.

Officials including Gee have stressed that the cuts affect 2% or less of the nearly 25,000 students on the Morgantown campus. But in its appeal, the Department of World Languages, Literatures and Linguistics says that figure distorts the truth.

It says 2,832 students have signed up for language instruction this fall – about 11% of Morgantown’s enrollment.

“I don’t contest that,” Gee said in response. “The reason the language department has a lot of student hours is because of the fact that they have language requirements for taking two semesters in the College of Arts and Sciences.”

WVU is also considering a plan to eliminate the language requirement altogether.

“If you do away with those requirements, and you just take a look at the number of majors and minors that they have, they have less than 1%. And so I think that is important to note,” Gee said. “I think they have 21 majors and something like 55 double majors.”

Gee was asked why any student, whose career interest intersects with languages, would travel to West Virginia to pursue any major, when a flagship university in their home state offers that major, plus face-to-face language instruction.

“Well, we don’t know whether we are or not (offering that instruction). …There are a lot of modern approaches to teaching languages that I think are very important,” he said. “We have two or three institutions in the Big 12 that have some of the best language programs in the country.”

University officials have also suggested language apps as a potential alternative.

WVU “will provide great language instruction” with or without a world languages department, and it will be “robust,” Gee insisted.

But when pressed repeatedly on specifics, he said, “You’re going to ask that question 14 times … but I am not going to get ahead of my process.”

The world languages department, in its appeal, says WVU is essentially shutting down a money-maker. Its revenue after expenses over the past three years has averaged $871,384.

The document also points to an increase in majors this fall, and says there are 268 students enrolled as language minors. “Additional students have asked to declare majors and minors recently but have been blocked from doing so,” the appeal states.

April Kaull, a WVU spokeswoman, denied on Monday that anyone is being blocked from entering those programs because of WVU’s “Academic Transformation.”

Those protesting the cuts say eliminating languages would put WVU in an undesirable position among R1 research universities, the most research-intensive institutions.

Of nearly 150 R1 universities in the United States, all others offer courses in world languages, except for the New Jersey Institute of Technology, according to fall 2021 data from the MLA.

Nationwide, many universities, in particular those in the Northeast and Midwest, have experienced enrollment losses, and are warning of an “enrollment cliff,” when birth-rate declines after the Great Recession of 2008 reach college campuses by 2026.

But beyond that, said Gee, higher education has lost the public’s confidence.

“You know, fewer than 36% of the American public now believe in higher education. That is devastating. If we were running a car company, and only 36% of the people thought the cars were important, we would be in the ditch.”

Like other universities, he said, WVU has “limited resources and we have infinite appetite.”

If languages were to see a resurgence, the university could revisit the issue, he said. Right now,“Students are voting with their feet.”

Nineteen of the 25 departments impacted by the recommendations have appealed, and Gee said he is learning from those submissions, though he declined to specify. He said the process is moving quickly, as it should given the high stakes.

“Speed is our friend,” he said.

In the meantime, WVU’s president is doing what he can to take the criticisms in stride.

“I don’t read social media. I don’t read a lot of things. Because if I did, I probably wouldn’t get out of bed,” Gee said.

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