reasons to maintain a program

[Emily Tall]

I seem to remember George Kalbouss at an AATSEEL convention a few years ago
saying that what worked was support from the community and local legislators.

    Emily Tall

Benjamin Rifkin wrote:

> 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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