A bit of a public service announcement: Modern Language Association President Russell Berman has issued a letter calling upon its members to protest the cuts to education, especially languages and the humanities, that are written into the new federal budget. This section from the letter, in particular, highlights the damage that […]

There’s a certain urgency to the question asked on the blog of The Foreign Language Fourteen, “When did you first realize that knowing a foreign language was cool?” The blog prompts its readers with questions like “Do you know that Spanish won’t get you anywhere in Brazil?” “Can you read Plato […]

The thinning out, scaling down, and downright elimination of language programs seems to be a normalizing trend in these times of budgetary hardship. While the State University of New York at Albany’s wholesale elimination of its French, Italian, Russian, classics and theater programs this month has received some notice, it hasn’t, […]

Along with thousands of UC (University of California) students, staff, and faculty members, I participated in the recent massive system-wide three-day strikes organized to protest the proposed 32% hikes in tuition fees. Apart from a move to cancel classes, the strikes included a particularly inspiring production of Waiting for Lefty, protest […]

Foreign language programs, and language studies in general (including English) stand to be severely cut in the latest round of budget cuts announced by the California state government. For those not on the UCB mailing lists, I’ll reproduce below the entire letter sent out by Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and Exec. Chancellor and Vice Provost […]

I got this email from Wolfgang E. Adolph in the Department of Mod. Lang. & Linguistics at Florida State University via the Language Learning and Technology International Information Forum listserv; considering the UC system’s ongoing budget woes and threats to our languages at Cal I thought it’d be good to cross-post in its […]