Four Religion Professors Bow Out Sonderegger, Saleh, Bakhos Accept New Teaching Posts; Keenan to Retire

Author: Andrew Gissing

Five of the 11 professors currently teaching in the Department of Religion will not be returning to Middlebury College for the 2002-2003 academic year. Professor Kate Sonderegger, Assistant Professor Walid Saleh and Visiting Assistant Professor Carol Bakhos have all accepted positions teaching at other institutions. Professor John Keenan and Assistant Professor Rebecca Gould will be on leave next year. Keenan will retire the following year.

Sonderegger, who has taught courses in the Christian tradition at Middlebury for 15 years, plans to teach at the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Va.

"In November," explained Sonderegger, "I was offered a chance to join the theology faculty of an Episcopal seminary. I took the post because it offers me a chance to teach theology to a new group of students, graduate students, and in a new way, to those training for ministry in the Church."

Bakhos, who has taught courses in Biblical Hebrew and the Jewish tradition, will assume the position of Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies in the Near Eastern Languages and Cultures Department at the University of California at Los Angeles. Saleh, Middlebury's resident scholar of Islam, has accepted a position at the University of Toronto, where he will have a joint appointment in the Religion and the Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations departments. He will also be affiliated with the Center for the Study of Religion, one of the largest in North America for graduate study in religion.

After retiring from Middlebury, Keenan, an Episcopal priest, plans to continue his church engagements as well as various ongoing scholarly projects.

"The resignation of professors Bakhos, Saleh and Sonderegger, together with Professor Keenan's retirement, mark a turning point in the history of the department," remarked Dean of the Faculty Robert Schine. "I have to say that the very fact that our faculty are wooed away by other institutions, and by institutions that train doctoral students, is a blow for Middlebury, to be sure, but it is also a tribute to the excellence of the faculty. We succeed in attracting scholar-teachers of such caliber that other institutions want them — of the caliber of these professors who are now making an exodus from the Religion Department."

Taking these positions will enable the professors to explore new opportunities and focus on specific aspects of their specialties. "I am looking forward to embarking on a new phase of my career, one that is more focused on my development as a scholar," said Bakhos. "While I very much enjoy teaching undergraduates, I nonetheless welcome the opportunity to work with graduate students who are interested in rabbinic, intellectual and cultural history."

Saleh, a Quranic studies specialist who focuses on the history of intellectual thought in medieval Islam and apocalyptic Islamic literature, will be on a fellowship in Cairo next year before taking up his new position at the University of Toronto. His new office will enable him to finish a critical edition of the Quranic commentary of al-Thalabi, an important medieval commentary on the Quran.

"Perhaps the thing I look forward to most is that I will be teaching seminars in Arabic and other Semitic languages. I am also looking forward to teaching at the Center for the Study of Religion," commented Saleh. "In addition, the library there has one of the finest collections of primary material in Islamic Languages." He added, "I would like to pay homage to the Starr Library's hard-working and dedicated staff, especially Joanne Schnider Hill, Mary-Ruth Crawford and Hans Raum. They truly helped me build a fine Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies collection that I am really sad to leave behind."

"Professor Saleh," said Schine, "has been a significant presence in the department and beyond. At a time when many colleges awakened to the importance of Islam and scrambled to incorporate the study of Islam into their curricula, we were already fortunate to have Professor Saleh, a scholar of Islam trained at Yale who also brought great breadth of erudition to the College."

To accommodate the departure of so many members of the faculty, the College is hard at work to find replacements. In anticipation of Keenan's retirement, Elizabeth Morrison has been hired to fill his position in East Asian Religions. Department Chair and Pardon Tillinghast Professor of Religion Larry Yarbrough is confident that a replacement for Saleh will be found in time for next year, as the early stages of the process have already revealed some "excellent candidates."

Said Yarbrough, "Because it takes time to find the right people, we cannot think just about next year. If we do find the right people to replace Professor Saleh and Professor Bakhos for next year, the course offerings will be much the same as they were this year, though the new faculty will no doubt have strengths which differ some and eventually result in new courses. Professor Gould's replacement will add a new course or two to our offerings. [Assistant] Professor James Davis is developing new courses in religious issues in biomedical ethics, religion and politics. So the department is continuing to explore new areas, building on our strengths and engaging student interests."

News of the professors' resignations has come as a shock to students. "I was upset when I heard that Professor Bakhos was leaving," said Alyssa Finn '04, "especially since I am majoring in religion with a focus in Jewish studies. Course selection will be minimal, and while deans Edleson and Schine will be teaching some courses in Hebrew translation and Biblical Hebrew, there won't be a full time professor to cover Judaism."

However there is little to worry about, assured Yarbrough. "Departments are constantly changing," he said. "Most of the time the change is incremental. This time we had three in one year. If I thought [Sonderegger], [Saleh] and [Bakhos] were leaving because they found it difficult to teach, write and live here, or because they were unhappy here, I would be worried. But I know that is not the case. Each of them came here and did well, their work was noticed and schools with graduate programs came after them. They will be challenged in new ways."

"I am pleased for all of them, but I am equally pleased with my colleagues who remain," Yarbrough added. "And when we hire replacements for [Sonderegger], [Saleh] and [Bakhos], they too will be good. That is the only way to think about building a department or a college."