reasons to maintain a program

[Benjamin Rifkin]

Dear SEELANGers:

Some of you have written me, off list, asking for some help in
drafting letters of support for the Russian program at the University
of Memphis.

Our colleague Elizabeth Blake has already written to the list with
specifics about the situation of her program, and I hope you will
read her message to get some specifics on the context of the program.

In addition to the specific situation of the University of Memphis,
here is some more global information that might be of assistance to
you in drafting a letter of this support:

Russian as a language of enormous cultural significance (no student's
understanding of world literature, art, or music can be complete
without at least a serious introduction to Russian literature, art
and music)

Russian as a language of enormous political and strategic
significance (students need to learn about the changing global
realities and Russian-American geopolitical relations are of
tremendous importance).  Note here that Russian is a national
language not only of the Russian Federation, but also of Kazakhstan
and Kyrgyzstan; it is a lingua franca through much of Central Asia.

Russian as a language of enormous economic significance:  the Russian
economy is booming and the US can expect to be importing large
quantities of Russian oil and natural gas (cf recent article on front
page of the NY Times Business section last week) in the next decade,
when new pipelines will make it less expensive to import from Russia
than from the Middle East.

Of course, one can add many more reasons to this list:  see the
information on the AATSEEL website (why study Russian? a joint
project of AATSEEL and ACTR).  I have also written at length about
this topic to SEELANGs in the past; that message is in the SEELANGs
archive.

Perhaps colleagues from programs that have survived a threat can
write SEELANGs with information about the letters their
administrators found compelling.

Thank you for your efforts to help support this program.

Sincerely,

Ben Rifkin

--
=================
Benjamin Rifkin

Professor of Slavic Languages, Slavic Dept., UW-Madison
1432 Van Hise Hall, 1220 Linden Dr.
Madison, WI  53706 USA
voice: 608/262-1623; fax: 608/265-2814
http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/slavic/rifkin/

Director of the Russian School
Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT  05753
voice:  802/443-5533; fax: 802/443-5394
http://www.middlebury.edu/~ls/russian/

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