Termination of the UC Davis Russian Program

[gutscheg at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU]

Daniel Rancour-Laferriere has asked me to forward this to SEELANGS. He thought
a "brief paragraph of protest" to his dean and chancellor would be helpful.
They are: Dean Elizabeth Langland, Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies,
UC Davis, elangland at ucdavis.edu; Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef, UC Davis,lnvanderhoef at ucdavis.edu

AN OPEN LETTER TO ELIZABETH LANGLAND (DEAN OF HUMANITIES, ARTS AND CULTURAL
STUDIES, UC DAVIS), AND TO THE WIDER ADMINISTRATIVE, ACADEMIC, STUDENT,
AND RUSSIAN CULTURAL COMMUNITIES.

RE:  The Termination of the UC Davis Russian Program

FROM: Daniel Rancour-Laferriere, Professor of Russian, Director of Russian
Winder McConnell, Professor of German, Chair of German and Russian
Clifford Bernd, Professor of German
Gail Finney, Professor of Comparative Literature and German
Karl Menges, Professor of German
Yuri Druzhnikov, Professor of Russian
Peter Schaeffer, Professor of German
Carlee Arnett, Assistant Professor of German
Ingeborg Henderson, Senior Lecturer in German
Frederick Choate, Lecturer in Russian
Avram Brown, Lecturer in Russian

DATE: 18 January 2002

One week ago the Director of the Russian Program was informed by Dean Elizabeth
Langland that the Program will be closed down.  Russian language courses
will be phased out beginning this fall, and it will no longer be possible
for students to choose to major in Russian.

This unilateral decision by the Dean comes as a complete surprise to members
of the German & Russian Department.  By all measures the Russian Program
has been thriving.  Enrollments in Russian courses have increased steadily.
 Student Credit Hours per full time faculty member increased 56% in 2000-01,
the largest increase in the Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies (HARCS)
division.  More and more students from the local Russian community are enrolling
in Russian courses, and are making Russian part of a ?double major? which
will better enable them to enter careers in business, law, politics, education,
and so on.   Approximately half of the enrollments in our current Russian
literature and culture courses consist of Russians from the local Russian
community, and many ?heritage speakers? of Russian are now taking our advanced
language courses as well.  When we say ?local Russian community,? we are
referring to a (growing) population of approximately 100,000 immigrants
living in the Sacramento area.  The sons and daughters of this largest single
Russian population in northern California -- and who constitute an important
component of Tidal Wave II -- are turning to our Russian Program in increasing
numbers.

Another reason for our surprise and dismay was the complete lack of consultation
with us about the decision to cancel the Russian Program.  What is the official
procedure for terminating a program or department?  Was the Academic Senate
consulted?  Why was the last Teaching Program Planning and Review Committee
(TPPRC) report -- which recommended expansion, not cutting of the Russian
Program -- ignored?  Were other programs which may be adversely affected
by this decision -- International Relations, Comparative Literature, Second
Language Acquisition Institute, the Education Abroad Program -- consulted?
 For example, what will become of the 16 International Relations majors
who have made Russian their foreign language of choice?

One reason given for the cancellation of Russian was ?budget cuts.?  In
fact the amount saved by firing our two part-time lecturers is negligible,
a total of approximately $50,000 per year.  Given the recent report that
the cuts to UCD will not be at all as drastic as suggested earlier, what
is the financial rationale for dropping an intellectually sound program
such as Russian? In fact, the notion of cutting Russian could not be more
ill-conceived and ill-timed, given that we are *just now* experiencing the
beginning of Tidal Wave II. What justification is there for prioritizing
the total elimination of a major language from the curriculum, particularly
from a fiscal perspective? Anyone can look around the university and see
that money is being spent on all manner of projects -- we do not begrudge
the ducks the recent well-financed facelift for their arboretum, but is
this project so many times more important than the rather bargain-level
funding that is needed to keep on a couple of language teachers to maintain
the study of one of the world?s major languages?

The Russian Program is exceptionally well positioned within the current
political and educational climate.  Among the changes resulting from the
terrorist attacks of 9/11 is a new attitude of cooperation between the United
States and Russia.  President Vladimir Putin has joined with President George
W. Bush in the fight against international terrorism.  Central Asia has
also suddenly become strategically important, while many of the countries
there -- Kazakhstan, Tadzhikistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaidjan  -- use Russian
as a lingua franca.  In addition, there is the commercial advantage of using
Russian in all of the former Soviet republics.  If one wants to do business
in countries as diverse as Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Estonia, Latvia, Georgia,
etc.,  Russian is the language of choice.  Also, given the brilliant Russian
contributions to science and technology, the advanced students of science
and engineering at Davis must be given the opportunity to study Russian.

Russian remains a crucial language for the strategically important Former
Soviet region, yet somehow UC-Davis will have decided that this is the time
to eliminate the study of Russian!  UC-Davis students, thus disadvantaged
in the competition for military, government, international business and
development careers, will be left to wish they had gone to Berkeley or UCLA
 which, frankly, will seem like more serious universities. Indeed, has any
other world-class university in the entire United States eliminated its
Russian program?

At a time when there is much touting of the ideas of ?globalization,? ?diversity,?
and ?multiculturalism,? closing down a Program that represents a language
spoken by a high percentage of the world's population lends a very hollow
ring to such concepts.  There is an issue of credibility involved in all
of this.

Russia is the largest country in the world (to fly from one end of the country
to the other you have to pass through eleven time zones).  Russia is a land
of diverse cultures, religions, and ethnic groups.  In the wake of the dismemberment
of the Soviet Union, Russia has become a relatively free country with a
growing economy, a reinvigorated cultural life, and an ongoing religious
renaissance.  Russia has produced famous writers like Pushkin, Tolstoy,
Dostoevsky, Chekhov, and Nabokov.  The composers Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky,
the painters Chagall and Kandinsky -- came from Russia.  Nobel peace prize
winner Andrei Sakharov was one of the world's great human rights advocates.
 In Russia today another Nobel prize winner, dissident writer Alexander
Solzhenitsyn, is able to express his views freely.

Banishing Russian from this campus sets a dangerous precedent.  Insofar
as Russian is one of the smaller programs on campus, its cancellation will
only serve to create an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust among other
programs about further possible covert decisions by the administration.
 Is this the first step in a larger plan to consolidate and eliminate smaller
programs within the Division?  If so, why has this decision (and others
that follow), not been discussed in a collegial and open way with all concerned
faculty prior to beginning the consolidation/dismantling process?  Is there
any mention of such contemplated actions in the HARCS Academic Plan submitted
to the Provost in 2000? If not, why is this the case?  Were there any discussions
of such potential actions that were not conveyed to the faculty? What is
the position of the current Provost to terminating the Russian Program?


Must the sole criterion for termination be the corporate financial rationale,
which, in this case appears ludicrous, given the relatively small amount
of money involved? Are not the monetary savings considerably offset by the
educational loss (to say nothing of general morale among the foreign language
community)?  Universities that wish to be "great" do not arrive there by
making cuts in the liberal arts.  On the contrary, those programs already
existing should be strengthened at every opportunity.  Given the current
priorities, it is highly unlikely that UCD will ever rise beyond the level
of a very good polytechnical school, with the rather sad paradox of having
numerous first-rate Humanities scholars in an institution that will have
next-to-no reputation for overall excellence in that area.  In essence,
the Humanities, like L & S in general, will hardly ever be more than what
they currently are, namely, a "service" division for the rest of the campus.


Cutting the Russian program is apparently predicated upon the belief that
there is no future for the language (and perhaps the culture) of Russia
and its people.  That is a most cynical and short-term approach that reflects
the pathetic monolingual, and, despite all the panegyrics to multiculturalism,
monocultural stance of much of this country.  The concept of universitas
is one that could, and should, rightly be challenged with respect to any
institution embracing such an attitude.

The termination of Russian makes no sense when the program is being run
effectively by two productive and internationally recognized scholars and
two highly dedicated lecturers. The loss is immeasurably greater than any
conceivable gain. What in fact, are the "gains" that would stem from such
a move? In the final analysis, "cui bono"?  That is: who is served by all
of this?

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