To the Leaders at the University of Denver:
3 May 2026
Dear Provost Loboa, Faculty Senate President Watamura, Dean Byrne, and Review Committee Members:
It has come to our attention that you are considering eliminating the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Denver. We are writing to express our dismay and grave concern, and we urge you to reconsider your plan. Religious Studies is crucial to successful higher education. It contributes essential elements to educating well-informed citizens and critical thinkers who are prepared to respond to the many complex challenges we face in our current and future worlds. Your Department of Religious Studies offers several undergraduate and graduate degree programs, while also serving as an anchor department for the Joint Doctoral Program with Iliff. Eliminating Religious Studies would damage the educational mission of your university, and we sincerely hope that DU will not make that mistake.
The American Academy of Religion, the premier professional association dedicated to advancing the academic study of religion and fostering the public understanding of religion, has upheld the importance of the rigorous academic study of religion for many decades. We have reminded the public of the relevance and significant contributions religious studies makes to higher education in our public statement issued in 2020. We now repeat this reminder and urge you to reconsider DU’s current plan to eliminate the Religious Studies Department.
DU’s vision is to “be a great private university dedicated to the public good.” You seek to assist students in building “careers and lives of purpose” and to create “a diverse, ethical, and intellectually vibrant campus community.” Closing the department that has at its center interdisciplinary and global perspectives and intercultural competencies for a changing world appears a step in the wrong direction. The Department’s internationally recognized scholars and award-winning teachers have been productive and successful, and they offer high quality instruction to students. We encourage you to preserve for your students the option to study a wide variety of topics and explore religion and culture through rigorous academic study and community engagement.
As a prestigious institution of higher learning that seeks to produce high quality research and is committed to the liberal arts, DU has obligations beyond providing basic career preparation. We support DU’s goal of supporting current and future scholarship that can “address important scientific, sociopolitical, and cultural questions of the new century.” But DU cannot reach that goal if it eliminates the department that has at its center intercultural literacy and critical consciousness of world religious traditions.
Because we share your commitment to educating a thoughtful, engaged, and critical citizenry that can tackle the challenges facing society today and in the future, we urge you to retain the Department and support its faculty.
Sincerely,
Laurel Schneider, President of the AAR
Angela Sims, President-Elect of the AAR
Nikia Robert, Treasurer of the AAR
Kathleen Sands, Secretary of the AAR