Closure of German at USC

[andrew wachtel]

>From my perspective (speaking as a Slavist and not as an administrator), it
is important to avoid getting trapped in a discussion of how many majors one
might have or even how many bodies your program can put in seats.  If you
allow this to be a zero-sum conversation about foreign languages then German
(and Slavic) will loose to Chinese (for sure) and Arabic (for now), and/or
Hindi (in the foreseeable future).  Speaking from the perspective of a dean
(which I am, for my sins), faculty positions in the humanities are
considered zero-sum and so it makes sense to shift them to "where the action
is."  The question that needs to be posed to these sorts of deans, however,
is, "if this is a zero-sum game, why don't you consider taking positions
away from the one area of the humanities that has many more positions than
it can possible justify--the teaching of the Anglo-American tradition?"  "If
we are going to create global citizens and global universities, why are more
than half the language and literature positions at most universities in the
English department, why are history departments split half and half between
Americanists and the rest of the world?"

Andrew Wachtel  



On 4/13/08 8:40 PM, "Loren A. Billings" <billings at NCNU.EDU.TW> wrote:

> I was not able to access <chronicle.com> because it requires a fee. But see
> what 
> the following site says about Russian too, quoting Howard Gillman, dean of the
> College of Letters, Arts and Sciences:
> 
> <http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/04/11/german>
> 
> "There was a time when because of world events, the study of German and
> Russian and a few other languages and cultures struck us as really central. We
> now have a much broader perspective in the world."
> 
> Read on. This site is freely accessible. --Loren
> 
> --==Mailed via NCNU E-Mail==--
> 
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Andrew Wachtel
Dean, The Graduate School
Bertha and Max Dressler  Professor in the Humanities
Director, Roberta Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies
Northwestern University
Evanston, IL 60208

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