The dean of Georgetown University’s College of Arts & Sciences (CAS) addressed ongoing challenges and highlighted new projects and goals at a Feb. 7 town hall with faculty and staff.
At the town hall, CAS Dean David Edelstein detailed the College’s responses to budget constraints caused by declining university revenue, including reaffirming the College’s decision to cut Ph.D. admissions for Fall 2026 and Fall 2027 and emphasizing the importance of building up undergraduate programs at the Capitol Campus. Responding to federal pressures, Edelstein also emphasized that one of the College’s main priorities is protecting international community members and staying steadfast in Georgetown’s commitment to diversity programs.
Edelstein said senior university leadership remains committed to protecting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs amid the Trump administration’s efforts to cut them.
“As a Jesuit university, one of the key principles is that we value learning from people who are different than us,” Edelstein said at the town hall. “We value diversity. We value international and global perspectives on the challenges that we face, so supporting and ensuring the presence and the safety and the security and the participation and the leadership of people who come from all aspects of ours, all parts of our society and all parts of our globe.”
Edelstein said the College prioritizes safeguarding the university community as federal actions change higher education.
“As we all know, there are members of our community who have been targeted within the last year, if not beyond the last year,” Edelstein said. “That includes, but is not limited to, the international members of our community. I feel an obligation as dean — I know everybody in the senior leadership of this institution feels an obligation — to do our very best to protect our community, those who have been targeted.”
In March 2025, federal immigration agents detained Georgetown postdoctoral fellow Badar Khan Suri, whose detention a judge ruled unconstitutional in May, and the Trump administration has targeted international students and restricted visas since Trump’s inauguration.
John Griffin, a government professor who attended the town hall, said he appreciated Edelstein’s emphasis on community at Georgetown.
“One theme that I was impressed by is the dean’s overlapping goals to build community and to support interdisciplinary collaboration,” Griffin wrote to The Hoya. “In any large organization, including universities, there can be a tendency for each corner of the institution to see things from a zero-sum perspective — another unit’s gain is my unit’s loss.”
Edelstein also addressed the future of the College’s doctoral programs, as the university moves to dismantle the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences and shift graduate programs to specific departments, some of which are in CAS.
In early December, the College directed departments with doctoral programs to significantly reduce Ph.D. admissions for Fall 2026 and Fall 2027, leaving many departments uncertain about the future of their doctoral programs.
Edelstein said that while the reductions will prove challenging, he hopes the Ph.D. programs’ work will continue.
“We all value the presence of our previous students, and I’m committed to sustaining the work that we do through our doctoral programs, even as we have had to make some changes and cuts,” Edelstein said.
“I can’t guarantee that after two years we’re going to be able to go back to where we were,” Edelstein added. “And I can’t guarantee that things are going to get better, or they may get worse.”
Edelstein also said the College will consider introducing new doctoral programs in the future.
David Collins, the chair of the history department who attended the town hall, said the history department — which had to cut its Ph.D. admissions by over 25% — was especially concerned with graduate programs at the town hall.
“We’re in an admission cycle for the graduate program, and this is exactly what’s being shrunk, and for the history department, the master’s program and the doctoral programs are just so important to our identity as a research faculty, but also as a faculty that contributes to the core curriculum,” Collins told The Hoya. “The doctoral students, in particular, play an enormous role in that.”
Edelstein said he is looking forward to expanding the Capitol Campus, though the undergraduate programs remain below the university’s targets.
“This is an opportunity for us to have more students, to have opportunities to grow as an institution, to do new and exciting things and to do it in a location, oh, by the way, which is a pretty cool and interesting location,” Edelstein said.
“I will be honest, the numbers in the public policy program and in the environment and sustainability program are not where we want them to be or need them to be,” Edelstein added.
The Capitol Campus expanded in Fall 2025 and now houses a variety of academic programs, including a semester study option and two joint degree programs in public policy and environment and sustainability.
Edelstein said sustaining the College’s values and motivation in the face of current financial challenges and federal pressures is essential to retaining the spirit of the College.
“I spend a lot of my days thinking about opportunities for exciting new things we can do even as we’re under the constraints that we’re operating under,” Edelstein said. “And I work with faculty and staff and students to identify those opportunities, and it’s something that I think has to remain important. If we lose that ambition, I think we lose our sense of mission and our sense of purpose.”
