To the Leaders at Virginia Tech:
16 September 2025
Dear President Sands, Provost Clarke, Dean Belmonte, and Faculty Senate President Lemkul:
The leadership of the American Academy of Religion (AAR), the premier professional association with a world-wide membership of over 6000, writes to express its concern that Virginia Tech University is planning to eliminate its one-of-a-kind Religion and Culture Bachelor’s degree program and to dissolve the Department of Religion and Culture. The AAR is dedicated to advancing the academic study of religion and fostering the public understanding of religion, a commitment it has maintained and refined over more than a century since its conception in 1909. We have reminded the public of the relevance and significant contributions religious studies makes to higher education in our public statement issued in 2020.
The research and public engagement of religious studies scholars, including many of the scholars at Virginia Tech, makes it very clear that the study of religion is more than ever before essential to the mission of the university, to the understanding of global challenges such as violence and poverty, and to making the world a place of respectful co-existence. To eliminate religious studies is to foreclose an opportunity to participate in creating a more just world. We respect the fact that Virginia Tech is dedicated to a motto of service and wishes to “push the boundaries of knowledge” and values a “transdisciplinary approach to preparing scholars to be leaders and problem solvers.” Religious Studies, an inherently interdisciplinary field of studies, prepares students to develop intercultural competence and critical leadership skills. Your Department of Religion and Culture, including its endowed Judaic Studies Program, Catholic Studies bequest and several major research projects, is demonstrating precisely this kind of interdisciplinary relevance and contributes to your central mission. We would like to call on you to continue your support of religious studies and your outstanding faculty in the Department of Religion and Culture, who have a demonstrated record of service to the university, as you seek to fulfil these commitments.
As you point out, Virginia Tech seeks to be “an inclusive community of knowledge, discovery and creativity dedicated to improving the quality of life and the human condition within the Commonwealth of Virgina and throughout the world.” As the commonwealth’s most comprehensive university, Virginia Tech offers more than practical degrees. It provides the educational foundation for meaningful civic engagement. Virginia Tech seeks to educate students who can become “a force for positive change.” The academic study of religion is critical to this education, providing not only transferable skills and competencies but a special vocabulary, historical depth, and informed perspective to lead in global and local conversations on various kinds of community needs, meanings, and innovations.
We recognize that as part of the public university system of Virginia, your university has obligations beyond providing basic career preparation. You are responsible for helping shape thoughtful, engaged, and critical citizens. Eliminating the department and degree program that have at their center intercultural literacy and critical consciousness of world religious traditions goes counter to the public record of distinction of the University. We urge you to recognize that religious studies is a strong ally, and enabler, of the mission and vision of the university. In the spirit of constructive partnership in higher education, we ask you not to eliminate but to support the degree program and the Department of Religion and Culture.
Sincerely,
Leela Prasad, President of the American Academy of Religion
Laurel Schneider, President-Elect of the AAR
Angela Sims, Vice President of the AAR
Nikia Robert, Treasurer of the AAR
Kathleen Sands, Secretary of the AAR