Emerson College Laying Off Staff Amid Enrollment Decline Following Anti-Israel Protests
“in an email sent to faculty and staff Tuesday, announced that it will lay off staff and not fill some vacant positions in fiscal year 2025”
Emerson College in Boston was the site of multiple anti-Israel protests this spring that had to be cleared by police. Now, in a related development, enrollment at the school is down, and they’re laying off staff members.
Longtime readers know that I am a graduate of Emerson. It brings me no joy to report this.
BREAKING: Enrollments at Emerson College are way down, in part due to protests, and the school is planning to lay off staff, including possibly faculty: pic.twitter.com/jt1NH5FyKQ
— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) June 19, 2024
From Boston.com:
Emerson College announces layoffs amidst enrollment decline linked to campus protests
Following an enrollment decline, Emerson College, in an email sent to faculty and staff Tuesday, announced that it will lay off staff and not fill some vacant positions in fiscal year 2025, according to The Boston Globe.
The college is blaming the enrollment decline in part on “negative press and social media” from the pro-Palestinian demonstrations and subsequent arrests.
In the early morning hours of April 25, 118 student protesters were arrested by Boston police when officers swept through the pro-Palestine encampment at Boylston Place Alley, a public right-of-way that leads to the State Transportation Center.
President Jay Bernhardt wrote that he expects the enrollment decline to last only one year, but the effects will ripple through the budget for the next several.
“We attribute this reduction to multiple factors, including national enrollment trends away from smaller private institutions, an enrollment deposit delay in response to the new FAFSA rollout, student protests targeting our yield events and campus tours, and negative press and social media generated from the demonstrations and arrests,” Bernhardt wrote in an email shared with the Globe…
Boston.com could not reach members of the Emerson Staff Union in time for publication…
“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Illona Yosefov, an instructional technologist at the college and chief steward of the union. Yosefov is also a member of the Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine.
This was the scene at Emerson back in April.
BREAKING: The Emerson College Encampment is being swept by the Massachusetts State Troopers
WILD FOOTAGE pic.twitter.com/13ypbgf7Uj
— Stu (@thestustustudio) April 25, 2024
More from CBS News:
Emerson was one of several Boston-area colleges that saw pro-Palestinian protests inspired by student protesters at Columbia University. Protesters set up tents in a public alley next to Boylston Street in April. They said they wouldn’t leave until Emerson called for a ceasefire in Gaza and divested from companies and institutions doing business with Israel
On April 25, Boston police in riot gear broke up the protests, arresting 108 at the camp. Four officers were injured during the arrests. Police said protesters were violating city ordinances by camping out in the alley, which is not solely owned by Emerson.
Emerson said the enrollment decline is believed to be “a one-year phenomenon,” but it will still require “immediate spending reductions” to make up for lost tuition and housing revenue.
Schools like @EmersonCollege lack the self awareness to realize that the ideology of its President and faculty is what enables and facilitates the anti-semitic, marxist, mask wearing, mobs of indoctrinated students on campus. (and reduces enrollment)
But parents get it. 🇺🇸🇮🇱 https://t.co/VcYmuwTu1h
— John Ondrasik (@johnondrasik) June 19, 2024
Parents of prospective students touring campus this past spring must have seen the protests, encampments, and all the unrest.
Who can blame them for choosing to go elsewhere?
Featured image via YouTube.
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Comments
Gee whiz, I’m surprised. I thought loud, dirty, filthy, threatening protests was conducive to a good learning environment and would attract more students.
With rue my heart is laden.
Well, not so much rue as schadenfreud.
The kids aren’t coming back , parents getting smart
Yes I read this too in the Boston Globe. I used to have many friends who taught at Emerson in the communications department. It’s a school meant for creative people in the arts. So it’s always been kind of fringe place filled with many “progressive “ ideas. But it used to be friendly and welcoming , kind of a haven for kids who didn’t fit in. It’s sad to see these same kids now excluding and bullying other students. I hope Emerson suffers some for this for a while ; as do the other schools who have encouraged this kind of violence and hatred. Hitting the administration in the wallet is the only way change will happen.
Yes, I do hope that this is representative of what is happening at more prominent places, like Columbia. Unfortunately, those schools will probably be able to hide it by just accepting a bigger percentage of applicants.
Is Emmerson laying off the right people, killing Affirmative crap, useless degrees for grifters, or are cutting competent, productive staff, while keeping useless people?
I doubt the staff reductions include DEI staff.
COVID taught a lot of lessons. One of them is that paying for things you don’t receive is stupid.
Paying for an expensive education the student cannot actually attend class to receive, is stupid.
The school allowed this nonsense to fester and grow (FA) and now enrollment is way down and the school may be in a death spiral (FO). I don’t see a problem here…..
Go even moar woker, Emerson. Show the world how it works.
From the River Charles
To the Ocean Atlantic
Even if it’s just temporary
This news is pretty fantastic
Let’s Go Emerscum
Apparently, even in America in 2024,
even in Boston, Mass,
if you are on the side of the folks who kidnap and kill Americans,
and disrupt classes in order to defend rapists and kidnappers in the name of religion ,
some families don’t much care to spend tens of thousands of additional dollars
in order to soak up additional wisdom from you.
Who’d a thought it
======
Can you imagine hiring anybody who chose to attend Emerson post-2023
so again
its the “negative press”
NOT THE FACT THAT THEY ARE HARBORING ANTI AMERICANS AND SUPPORTING DOMESTICTERRORISTS
its the FACT that the word got out about that
defund allllll
no tax money to anything except the military courts treasury
let congress do a gofundme
they do anyway with the lobbyists
lake and palmer had no comment
This part made me laugh:
“’It doesn’t make any sense,’ said Illona Yosefov, an instructional technologist at the college and chief steward of the union. Yosefov is also a member of the Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine.”
This does not inspire confidence in the intellectual capacities of Emerson’s employees.