24 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY DECEMBER 11-17, 2025 www.montereycountynow.com seek mergers with other institutions to strengthen finances or broaden academic programming,” Patricia Szasz wrote. Her dissertation is perhaps a cautionary tale for the future of consolidation in higher ed. She focused on the Midd-MIIS merger and surveyed people involved. “There was a perception among employees on both campuses of conflicting organizational cultures and an ‘us versus them’ mentality,” she found. She tried to distill what success would look like from either vantage point. From the Monterey perspective, sheer survival instead of bankruptcy was success. From the Vermont perspective, “The acquisition of a West Coast graduate school appealed as it would create an ‘alternate revenue stream’ for the institution,” according to one respondent. “This expansion was perceived as a means to ‘ensure its long-term competitiveness and survival by broadening out of being exclusively a liberal arts college.’” Unless and until MIIS was financially sustainable, it would be a drag on Middlebury. Even with investments like a new dorm to provide housing for up to 88 students—a big recruitment incentive—the institute was still a drag. Twenty years later, the Middlebury acquisition is ending catastrophically for MIIS. An ad hoc working group hopes another prospective buyer might go better—if they can find one. The group convened almost immediately after Baucom’s announcement. “The bulk of our time has been devoted to collecting information and ideas, including suggestions from students, alumni, friends, staff, and faculty about schools that we might want to approach about a possible interest in taking over MIIS,” Philip Murphy, a professor of policy analytics who is char of the committee, wrote on behalf of the rehoming group in a Nov. 10 email to the campus community. Faculty are courting prospective buyers, but they are not the negotiators; any deal would be up to Middlebury. The ad hoc committee has, however, gathered a few key facts. The school’s original $10 million debt remains on the books at Middlebury, and would likely be part of any negotiation. One unnamed institution has been in discussions with senior leadership, subject to a nondisclosure agreement. And the previous name, before it was changed to the Middlebury Institute in 2015 (Monterey Institute of International Studies), appears not to be trademarked. Middlebury has been silent so far on what it intends to do with its property holdings—at least 24 parcels assessed at a value of over $40.4 million, according to Monterey County Assessor property records. (A strategic planning process now underway in Vermont includes the possibility of a West Coast undergrad campus.) “Our top priority has been to see if we can preserve MIIS and its degree programs as a whole, and as an entity that teaches students in person in Monterey,” Murphy wrote. “But we also recognize that this might not be achievable.” For example, sources say some Chinese institutions have so far expressed interest in translation and interpretation—the closure announcement was covered extensively in Chinese-language media, describing MIIS as “the Harvard of translation.” Murphy realizes the group is aspirational for now—he says there have been leads, but no prospect that he’d wager offers more than a 10-percent likelihood of success. “We are very serious about trying to keep the whole institute together, buildings and all,” he says. “But that’s of course a pie-in-thesky thing.” As the group approaches other institutions, they find that everyone is impacted by the broader trend in higher education making an acquisition unlikely at the moment. “We’ve carved out a niche in so many really important, crucial areas,” adds Sharad Joshi, a member of the committee and a professor of nonproliferation and terrorism studies. “You go anywhere and say ‘Monterey Institute’ and everybody knows it in international relations. The reach is huge.” The rehoming group hopes a white knight might see that and, despite the broader trend in higher education, save the institute. If there is success in finding a new home for MIIS, MIIS is unlikely to still be the unit it is today. MIIS faculty are not tenured, but serve on contracts of up to seven years; as those contracts end, they will not be renewed. The total workforce of 125 (61 faculty and 63 staff) will be phased out, with the first round of 15 layoffs already announced for Jan. 1. Some of those staff members are demanding fairness. Some have consulted with attorneys to see if they might have a legal remedy. When Middlebury last laid off staff at MIIS, they offered two weeks of pay for every year of service. “A lot of us thought if the time comes, at least there’s going to be a decent package,” says one senior administrator. Now, they are offering just $500 per year of service, something they view as a “final indignity.” Middlebury, meanwhile, is in the midst of a capital campaign, seeking to raise $600 million. As of Dec. 8, they are almost there, reporting over $579 million raised. Gaspard Etienne Weiss was born in 1901 and educated in Paris. After World War II, in 1948, he immigrated to the U.S. and taught at Smith College, University of Massachusetts and Ohio State University, among others. In 1951, he moved to Monterey to teach French at what is today called the Defense Language Institute. Four years later, in 1955, he founded the Monterey Institute of Foreign Studies. (It was renamed the Monterey Institute of International Studies in 1979. By then, Weiss had already been forced out by people he had helped recruit to serve on the board, faced with a different management style and also suspicion that dogged him for the rest of his life that he was a Nazi sympathizer based on his work for the Vichy government bureaucracy, something he denied.) The school went on to include a range of specialized master’s programs in international relations subfields. The leadership at its James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies essentially invented the field, and has offices in Vienna and Washington, D.C. (The center is one of few MIIS programs that Middlebury is set to keep, as it is financially self-sustaining.) Degree programs at MIIS today include nonproliferation and terrorism studies; translation, interpretation and localization management; environmental policy and management; threat intelligence; and cybersecurity. In November, teams from 14 colleges and universities (including a team of four from Middlebury College) traveled to MIIS to participate in the Atlantic Council’s Cyber 9/12 Strategy Challenge, the first time the event was ever held on the West Coast, giving students a chance to try out their cybersecurity skills in a simulation. “It was a great event, exactly the kind of thing we like to do—experiential, outside the classroom,” DaytonJohnson says. He was particularly impressed by the Midd students he met, a glimmer of what could’ve been. “I remember thinking as I was talking to them: This could’ve worked. I think it was a great idea, and we showed just last month that it can work.” It did not work for Middlebury, but maybe it will work for another institution, or maybe not. And those who are able are already moving on. Cooper’s contract ends in June. She continues her work as an interpreter, and she’s already gotten another job doing written translation for a furniture company that recently expanded to Paris. “I’m going to miss the students the most,” she says. “It’s kind of a thrill to train the next generation, and then you’re in the booth interpreting with them.” Stephanie Cooper in the simultaneous interpretation lab at MIIS, with 12 booths so up to 12 students can practice at once. They must learn to listen, understand, speak and anticipate all at once. “You need to be able to do a good half-hour, without flinching,” Cooper says. DANIEL DREIFUSS
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