(Near-) Nativism

[Eliot Borenstein]

        At the risk of drawing this discussion out even further, ia ne mogu
molchat'...

        It seems to me that people are over-reacting to the announcement of
a job opening for a "native speaker".  While this does, indeed, rule out
just about every American Slavist (with the possible exception of those who
were born to Russian parents, spoke the language at home, and actually
learned the grammar), it hardly qualifies as discrimination.  There are a
number of legitimate reasons for wanting to have a native speaker in your
department:

        1) the need for a native informant (as Richard Robin pointed out);

        2) the need for someone who can actually write and proof-read in
Russian (any non-native speaker who's had to present or publish a paper in
Russian can surely sympathize);

        3) the need for someone to offer specialized courses in Russian to
students who are native speakers of the target language (here at NYU, we
offer literature courses designed especially for our emigre students, who
would probably make the life of any less-than-native instructor a living
hell).

        Of course, there are plenty of *bad* reasons for wanting a native
speaker, such as the belief that a native speaker would somehow naturally
be a better language teacher.  But this is a misconception usually held by
people who don't know much about foreign languages, rather than by filologi
themselves.

        I guess I'm disturbed by this discussion because I see it in the
larger context of the finger-pointing that inevitably arises during
economic hard times.  I don't know how many times, for example, I've heard
young male Slavists complain that they'll never get jobs because all the
jobs are going to women, or young female Slavists complain that they'll
never get jobs because all the jobs are going to men.  The fear that "the
Russians" are going to take "our" jobs seems to me to be another variation
on this basically paranoid theme, and it's all counter-productive.
Granted, this is all easy to say when you *have* a job, but I also remember
being denied a (very good) position because they wanted a native speaker,
and, even though I'm pretty comfortable with my own command of Russian, I
couldn't argue with their logic.

        People are not getting jobs because there are not enough jobs out
there, and not because the jobs that exist are being set aside for a
privileged few.

                                                Eliot Borenstein
                                                New York University