Russian Program to be eliminated

[David Powelstock]

Klawa,

I hope others with actual experience in these distressing situations will
chip in and offer much more useful advice and information than I, but for
starters, can your adminstration be unaware that Russian is one of the
critical languages cited by the US Government in launching its "National
Strategic Language Initiative"? See http://exchanges.state.gov/NSLI/. Surely
this poses a challenge to the claim that Russian is no longer relevant! Is
that really the best argument they've got?

Best wishes, and best of luck,
David
David Powelstock
Brandeis Univ.

-----Original Message-----
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list
[mailto:SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of Klawa Thresher
Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2008 4:25 PM
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Subject: [SEELANGS] Russian Program to be eliminated

Dear Colleagues,

I am trying to gather some information that might help save our Russian
program, which our new president has said will be cut because he feels that
Russian is no longer relevant.  If you know of any Russian programs that
were threatened with closing but were saved and are still flourishing (and
that could be a relative term), I would very much appreciate getting
information about them.

I know that this happened at Ohio State, the University of Pittsburg and
Macalaster College. Since I do not know the details, if colleagues at those
institutions could give me some information (especially
statistics) I would be very grateful.

I would appreciate getting this information as soon as possible, as I will
be having a hearing on this on Friday (yes, Good Friday!)

You can send this to me at kthresher at randolphcollege.edu

Thank you in advance,
Klawa Thresher

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