Elimination of UW Slavic Dept.

[Bill Derbyshire]

Dear Seelangers:
        By this time many of you have read the long letter distributed by
Dan Waugh concerning the elimination of the Dept. of Slavic Languages and
Literatures at the University of Washington. I wish to take this
opportunity to make a public appeal on behalf of that department:
        As a Past-President of AATSEEL, I encourage its current officers
and as many members of our profession who are willing to write to do so
objecting to this action and calling for the reversal of this decision.
        You have been reading about the possibility of UW's Slavic Dept.
being eliminated on this list for many months now, and many of you did
write. Please do so again. The final decision was announced on Friday. I
consider it an extremely ill-taken and ill-timed act. The Slavic Dept.  at
UW has a long and strong history. Various university guides have ranked it
among the top programs in this country, and its loss leaves a huge section
of the US without a Ph.D. program in Slavic. It has a excellent
undergraduate program and a large number of graduate students, many of
whom will now be forced to consider alternate plans for their future. This
comes at a time when many senior people such as myself have retired or are
planning to retire, and the need for a well-trained supply of replacements
is obvious. At a local level, business and trade with eastern Russia here
in the Northwest is on a sharp rise, and companies, as well as translation
agencies, count on the availability of well trained professionals being
supplied by the University of Washington.
        I am currently a Visiting Professor in UW's Slavic Dept., and I
have had a first-hand opportunity to observe its internal workings and the
quality and preparedness of its students. They are outstanding, and I note
that the the Administration of UW has not attacked the department on those
grounds. Rather it has used, inter alia, budgetary cuts from the capitol
in Olympia as the reason for this action. Few believe that. (Several other
programs were also eliminated.) There is clearly no internal budgetary
crisis at UW. Furthermore, the elimination of the Slavic Dept. was done
primarily behind closed doors with minimal involvement of the faculty or
departments involved, in other words, rather dirty business, no doubt
politically motivated. (Why Slavic and not some other discipline?)
        The action of the UW Administration is extremely unfortunate and
does not bode well for other departments similarly situated whose
administrations may be considering trying to eliminate or curtail programs
in Slavic. This is a clear instance where no one concerned about the
future of Slavic studies at this point in time can afford to be silent.
        Although the decision is said to be 'final', I continue to believe
that an outcry from our profession may yet help to reverse this decision.
(A similar decision to eliminate the Comparative Literature Ph.D program
at Rutgers University was reversed a couple of years ago in the face of
massive objections from the outside.)   PLEASE - write to:
                        William P. Gerberding, President
                        Office of the President
                        301 Administration   AH-30
                        University of Washington
                        Seattle       WA
           OR send a fax to him at:     206-543-3951

                                        Thank you.    Bill Derbyshire