Discussion Materials for Business Meetings

As we embark on an ambitious University-wide campaign, it is critical that our case for support is informed by our most dedicated advocates. In our business meetings in Paris, we will engage in a dialogue about campaign priorities and explore why the humanities matter in today’s increasingly global world. Your participation in these discussions is greatly appreciated. Please prepare by reading the articles and information provided in this packet prior to our meetings.

Business Meeting—Why the Humanities Matter Friday, 17 May

David Brooks, “History for Dollars.” New York Times, June 7, 2010.

Richard J. Franke, “The power of the humanities & a challenge to humanists.” Dedalus Volume 138, Number 1 (Winter 2009): 13–23.

Paul Jay and Gerald Graff, “Essay on new approach to defend the value of the humanities.” Inside Higher Ed, January 5, 2012.

Martha Nussbaum, “The Silent Crisis.” Chapter 1 in Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010.

Robert Pippin, “Liberation and the Liberal Arts.” Aims of Education Address, University of Chicago, September 19, 2000.

Business Meeting—UChicago Global Languages Initiative Saturday, 18 May

Division of the Humanities Draft White Paper, “University of Chicago Global Languages Initiative.” April 2013.

Modern Language Association (MLA), “Learning Another Language: Goals and Challenges.” April 2011.

Modern Language Association (MLA), “Statement on Language Learning and United States National Policy.” May 2012.

Anthony C. Woodbury, “What is an endangered language?” Edited by Betty Birner. Linguistic Society of America, 2009.

Spring Retreat 2013

Division of theHumanitiesVisiting Committee

David Brooks “History for Dollars” New York Times, June 7, 2010

June 7, 2010

History for Dollars By DAVID BROOKS

When the going gets tough, the tough take accounting. When the job market worsens, many students figure they can’t indulge in an English or a history major. They have to study something that will lead directly to a job.

So it is almost inevitable that over the next few years, as labor markets struggle, the humanities will continue their long slide. There already has been a nearly 50 percent drop in the portion of liberal arts majors over the past generation, and that trend is bound to accelerate. Once the stars of university life, humanities now play bit roles when prospective students take their college tours. The labs are more glamorous than the libraries.

But allow me to pause for a moment and throw another sandbag on the levee of those trying to resist this tide. Let me stand up for the history, English and art classes, even in the face of today’s economic realities.

Studying the humanities improves your ability to read and write. No matter what you do in life, you will have a huge advantage if you can read a paragraph and discern its meaning (a rarer talent than you might suppose). You will have enormous power if you are the person in the office who can write a clear and concise memo.

Studying the humanities will give you a familiarity with the language of emotion. In an information economy, many people have the ability to produce a technical innovation: a new MP3 player. Very few people have the ability to create a great brand: the iPod. Branding involves the location and arousal of affection, and you can’t do it unless you are conversant in the language of romance.

Studying the humanities will give you a wealth of analogies. People think by comparison — Iraq is either like Vietnam or Bosnia; your boss is like Narcissus or Solon. People who have a wealth of analogies in their minds can think more precisely than those with few analogies. If you go through college without reading Thucydides, Herodotus and Gibbon, you’ll have been cheated out of a great repertoire of comparisons.

Finally, and most importantly, studying the humanities helps you befriend The Big Shaggy.

Let me try to explain. Over the past century or so, people have built various systems to help them understand human behavior: economics, political science, game theory and evolutionary psychology. These systems are useful in many circumstances. But none completely explain behavior because deep

down people have passions and drives that don’t lend themselves to systemic modeling. They have yearnings and fears that reside in an inner beast you could call The Big Shaggy.

You can see The Big Shaggy at work when a governor of South Carolina suddenly chucks it all for a love voyage south of the equator, or when a smart, philosophical congressman from Indiana risks everything for an in-office affair.

You can see The Big Shaggy at work when self-destructive overconfidence overtakes oil engineers in the gulf, when go-go enthusiasm intoxicates investment bankers or when bone-chilling distrust grips politics.

Those are the destructive sides of The Big Shaggy. But this tender beast is also responsible for the mysterious but fierce determination that drives Kobe Bryant, the graceful bemusement the Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga showed when his perfect game slipped away, the selfless courage soldiers in Afghanistan show when they risk death for buddies or a family they may never see again.

The observant person goes through life asking: Where did that come from? Why did he or she act that way? The answers are hard to come by because the behavior emanates from somewhere deep inside The Big Shaggy.

Technical knowledge stops at the outer edge. If you spend your life riding the links of the Internet, you probably won’t get too far into The Big Shaggy either, because the fast, effortless prose of blogging (and journalism) lacks the heft to get you deep below.

But over the centuries, there have been rare and strange people who possessed the skill of taking the upheavals of thought that emanate from The Big Shaggy and representing them in the form of story, music, myth, painting, liturgy, architecture, sculpture, landscape and speech. These men and women developed languages that help us understand these yearnings and also educate and mold them. They left rich veins of emotional knowledge that are the subjects of the humanities.

It’s probably dangerous to enter exclusively into this realm and risk being caught in a cloister, removed from the market and its accountability. But doesn’t it make sense to spend some time in the company of these languages — learning to feel different emotions, rehearsing different passions, experiencing different sacred rituals and learning to see in different ways?

Few of us are hewers of wood. We navigate social environments. If you’re dumb about The Big Shaggy, you’ll probably get eaten by it.

 

Richard J. Franke “The power of the humanities & a challenge to humanists” Dedalus, Winter 2009

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The power of the humanities & a challenge to humanistsRichard J FrankeDaedalus; Winter 2009; 138, 1; Research Librarypg. 13

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Paul Jay and Gerald Graff “Essay on new approach to defend the value of the humanities” Inside Higher Ed, January 5, 2012

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Essay on new approach to defend the value of the humanities

Submitted by Paul Jay and Gerald Graff on January 5, 2012 - 3:00am

"When the going gets tough, the tough take accounting." With those succinct words in a June 2010op ed, [1] New York Times columnist David Brooks summed up the conventional wisdom on thecurrent crisis of the humanities. In an age when a higher education is increasingly about movingquickly through a curriculum streamlined to prepare students for a job, the humanities have nopractical utility. As Brooks observes, "when the job market worsens, many students figure they can’tindulge in an English or a history major," a fact that explains why the "humanities now play bit roleswhen prospective students take their college tours. The labs are more glamorous than the libraries."

Pushed into a corner by these dismaying developments, defenders of the humanities -- bothtraditionalists and revisionists — have lately been pushing back. Traditionalists argue thatemphasizing professional skills would betray the humanities' responsibility to honor the greatmonuments of culture for their own sake. Revisionists, on the other hand, argue that emphasizing thepractical skills of analysis and communication that the humanities develop would represent a sellout,making the humanities complicit with dominant social values and ideologies. But though these rivalfactions agree on little else, both end up concluding that the humanities should resist our culture'sincreasing fixation on a practical, utilitarian education. Both complain that the purpose of highereducation has been reduced to credentialing students for the marketplace.

Martha Nussbaum, for example, while stressing that the humanities foster critical thinking and theability to sympathetically imagine the predicament of others, insists such skills are, as the title of her2010 book puts it, "not for profit." [2] In doing so she draws a stark line between the worlds of thehumanities and the 21st-century workplace. Likewise, Geoffrey Galt Harpham in The Humanities andthe Dream of America, [3] laments the increasing focus on professional skills in the humanities at theexpense of reading great books. Stanley Fish takes an even more extreme position, insisting that thehumanities "don’t do anything, if by 'do' is meant bring about effects in the world. And if they don’tbring about effects in the world they cannot be justified except in relation to the pleasure they give tothose who enjoy them. To the question 'of what use are the humanities?', the only honest answer isnone whatsoever." Worse still, Frank Donoghue, in The Last Professors: The Corporate Universityand the Fate of the Humanities, [4] argues that the humanities will simply disappear in the newcorporate, vocation-centered university.

Ironically, these pessimistic assessments are appearing at the very moment when many employersoutside academe are recognizing the practical value of humanities training. Fish simply dismissesthe argument that "the humanities contribute to the economic health of the state — by producing more

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well-rounded workers or attracting corporations or delivering some other attenuated benefit —because nobody really buys that argument." But this would come as news to the many heads ofphilanthropic foundations, nonprofits, and corporate CEOs who have lately been extolling theprofessional value of workplace skills grounded in the humanities.

We would be the last to argue that traditional ways of valuing the humanities are not important, thatstudying philosophy, literature, and the fine arts do not have a value in and of themselves apart fromthe skills they teach. We also recognize that the interests of the corporate world and the marketplaceoften clash with the values of the humanities. What is needed for the humanities in our view is neitheran uncritical surrender to the market nor a disdainful refusal to be sullied by it, but what we might calla critical vocationalism, an attitude that is receptive to taking advantage of opportunities in the privateand public sectors for humanities graduates that enable those graduates to apply their training inmeaningful and satisfying ways. We believe such opportunities do exist.

To be sure, such optimism must be tempered in today’s bleak economy, where hardly any form ofeducation is a sure ticket to a job and where many in the private sector may still look with indifferenceor even disdain on a humanities degree. But as David Brooks himself went on to point out in his op-ed: "Studying the humanities improves your ability to read and write. No matter what you do in life,you will have a huge advantage if you can read a paragraph and discern its meaning (a rarer talentthan you might suppose). You will have enormous power if you are the person in the office who canwrite a clear and concise memo."

Brooks’ view is echoed by Edward B. Rust Jr., chairman and CEO of State Farm InsuranceCompanies, who observes that "at State Farm, our employment exam does not test applicants ontheir knowledge of finance or the insurance business, but it does require them to demonstrate criticalthinking skills" and "the ability to read for information, to communicate and write effectively, and tohave an understanding of global integration." And then there is Google, which more than any othercompany has sung the praises of humanities students and intends to recruit many of them. "We aregoing through a period of unbelievable growth," reports Google’s Marissa Mayer, "and will be hiringabout 6,000 people this year — and probably 4,000-5,000 from the humanities or liberal arts."

This evidence of the professional utility of humanities skills belies Donoghue’s apparent assumption(in The Last Professors) that the "the corporate world’s hostility" toward humanistic educationremains as intense today as it was a century ago, when industrialists like Andrew Carnegiedismissed such an education as "literally, worthless." Donoghue ignores changes in the globaleconomy, the culture, and the humanities themselves since Carnegie’s day that have given manycorporate leaders a dramatically more favorable view of the humanities’ usefulness. Associate DeanScott Sprenger of Brigham Young University, who oversees a humanities program we will discuss ina moment, quotes the dean of the Rotman School of Management in Toronto, who observes a"tectonic shift for business school leaders," who are now aware that "learning to think critically —how to imaginatively frame questions and consider multiple perspectives — has historically beenassociated with a liberal arts education, not a business school curriculum."

All of these commentators are right, and the skills they call attention to only begin to identify the rangeof useful professional competencies with which a humanities education equips 21st-centurystudents. In addition to learning to read carefully and to write concisely, humanities students aretrained in fields like rhetoric and composition, literary criticism and critical theory, philosophy, history,and theology to analyze and make arguments in imaginative ways, to confront ambiguity, and toreflect skeptically about received truths, skills that are increasingly sought for in upper managementpositions in today’s information-based economy. Even more important for operating as global citizensin a transnational marketplace, studying the literary, philosophical, historical, and theological texts ofdiverse cultures teaches humanities students to put themselves in the shoes of people who see andexperience the world very differently from their own accustomed perspectives. Are some corporationsstill looking for employees who will be well-behaved, compliantly bureaucratized cogs in the wheel?Of course they are. But increasingly, many others are looking for employees who are willing to think

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outside the box and challenge orthodoxy.

It is true that humanities study, unlike technical training in, say, carpentry or bookkeeping, preparesstudents not for any specific occupation, but for an unpredictable variety of occupations. But as manybefore us have rightly pointed out, in an unpredictable marketplace this kind of versatility is actuallyan advantage. As Associate Dean Sprenger notes, "the usefulness of the humanities" paradoxically"derives precisely from their detachment from any immediate or particular utility. Experts tell us thatthe industry-specific knowledge of a typical vocational education is exhausted within a few years," ifnot "by the time students enter the workforce." It is no accident, he observes, "that a large percentageof people running Fortune 500 companies (one study says up to 40 percent) are liberal artsgraduates; they advance more rapidly into mid- and senior-level management positions, and theirearning power tends to rise more significantly than people with only technical training."

If there is a crisis in the humanities, then, it stems less from their inherent lack of practical utility thanfrom our humanistic disdain for such utility, which too often prevents us from taking advantage of thevocational opportunities presented to us. This lofty disdain for the market has thwarted the success ofthe few programs that have recognized that humanities graduates have much to offer the worlds ofbusiness, technology, arts agencies, and philanthropic foundations.

The most promising of these was a program in the 1990s developed by the Woodrow WilsonNational Fellowship Foundation under the leadership of its then-director, Robert Weisbuch. Firstcalled "Unleashing the Humanities" and later "The Humanities at Work," the program, according toWeisbuch in an e-mail correspondence with the authors, "had persuaded 40 nonprofits and for-profitsto reserve meaningful positions for Ph.D. graduates in the humanities and had placed a large numberin well-paying and interesting positions — at places ranging from Verizon to AT Kearney to The WallStreet Journal to the National Parks Service." Unfortunately, Weisbuch reports, only a few humanitiesgraduate programs "enlisted their alumni and the influential corporations and others in their areas ofinfluence to revolutionize the possibilities for employment of humanities doctoral graduates," whilemost faculty members "continued to expect their graduate students to look for jobs much like theirown and to consider any other outcome a failure."

Today, however, some humanities programs that emphasize useful professional applications areprospering. One of these is a new undergraduate major at Brigham Young University called"Humanities +," [5] with the "+” referring to the value-added vocational component gained by studentswho elect the program. According to an e-mail to the authors from Associate Dean Sprenger, BYUhired a career services specialist tasked with "revolutionizing our humanities advising office alongthe lines of the Humanities + vision, and the program has developed ties with the university’scolleges of business and management" — a virtually unheard-of step for a humanities program. Theprogram’s students are urged "to minor in a practical subject, professionalize their language skills,and internationalize their profile by doing an overseas internship." The objective, Sprenger says, "isthat career thinking and strategizing become second nature to students," while faculty members "seeit as in their interest to help students find 'alternative' careers, and are reassured that they can rely onour advising office to be informed and to do the training."

Another notable program that sees its mission as "bringing humanities into the world" beyondacademe and that works closely with its university’s office of career placement is the Master of ArtsProgram in the Humanities (MAPH) at the University of Chicago, [6] which Gerald helped design anddirect in the 1990s. According to a recent article by program associate A.J. Aronstein in Tableau, [7] aUniversity of Chicago house journal, one recent MAPH graduate got a job as finance director inFlorida for Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, later served as chief of staff at the International TradeAssociation, and now works as a political consultant in Washington. Other MAPH graduates havegone on to internships and subsequent positions as museum curators, technical writers, journalistsand other media workers, marketing specialists, and policy analysts with investment firms.

The false assumption in both anti-utilitarian defenses of the humanities and pessimistic predictions of

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their extinction is that we have to choose between a credentializing and a humanizing view of highereducation, between vocational utility and high-minded study as an end in itself. This either/or way ofthinking about the humanities — either they exist solely for their own sake or they have nojustification at all – is a trap that leaves humanists unable to argue for the value of their work in termsof the practical skills it teaches, an argument that inevitably has to be made in the changingmarketplace of higher education. In fact, we would argue there is no defense of the humanities that isnot ultimately based on the useful skills it teaches.

Evidence is plentiful that stressing the range of expertise humanities graduates have makesintellectual and economic sense. Take, for example, Damon Horowitz, director of engineering atGoogle. He insisted recently in an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education entitled "FromTechnologist to Philosopher: Why You Should Quit Your Technology Job and Get a Ph.D. in theHumanities," that "if you are worried about your career ... getting a humanities Ph.D. is not only not adanger to your employability, it is quite the opposite. I believe there no surer path to leapingdramatically forward in your career than to earn a Ph.D. in the humanities." "You go into thehumanities to pursue your intellectual passion," he explains, "and it just so happens, as a byproduct,that you emerge as a desired commodity for industry."

Horowitz, a leading figure in artificial intelligence and the head of a number of tech startups, ought toknow. He took a break from his lucrative career to enroll in Stanford’s Ph.D. program in philosophybecause he figured out that in order to do his job in technology well he needed to immerse himself inthe humanities. "I realized that, while I had set out in AI to build a better thinker, all I had really donewas to create a bunch of clever toys." Horowitz came to realize that the questions he was "askingwere philosophical questions — about the nature of thought, the structure of language, the grounds ofmeaning." Returning to the humanities, Horowitz took time out from the world of artificial intelligenceto study "radically different approaches to exploring thought and language," such as philosophy,rhetoric, hermeneutics and literary theory. As he studied intelligence from these perspectives he"realized just how limited my technologist view of thought and language was. I learned how thequantifiable, individualistic, ahistorical — that is, computational — view I had of cognition failed toaccount for whole expanses of cognitive experience (including, say, most of Shakespeare)."

The concrete value of the humanities education Horowitz celebrates is especially well epitomized inthe new field of the digital humanities. The emergence of this field calls attention to how old 20th-century divisions between science and the humanities are breaking down and gives those of uscommitted to defending the practical value of the humanities a tremendous opportunity. The digitalhumanities represent the cutting-edge intersection of the humanities and computer science, themerging of skills and points of view from two formerly very different fields that are leading to a host ofexciting innovations – and opportunities for students who want to enter fields related to everythingfrom writing computer programs to text encoding and text editing, electronic publishing, interfacedesign, and archive construction. Students in the digital humanities are trained to deal with concreteissues related to intellectual property and privacy, and with questions related to public access andmethods of text preservation.

Graduates of the digital humanities programs that are now developing all over the country will be firstin line for such positions. For example, Paul’s university now has a Digital Humanities M.A. [8] withtwo converging tracks, one designed for students with a background in computer science and one forstudents with a background in the humanities. The program website notes that it offers "theoretical,critical, social, and ethical contexts for thinking about the making of new knowledge through digitalhumanities research and applications, from issues of intellectual property and privacy, to questions ofpublic access and methods of preservation." When we are asked about the practical value of ahumanities education, we need to add the digital humanities to the list.

We believe it is time to stop the ritualized lamentation over the crisis in the humanities and get onwith the task of making them relevant in the 21st century. Such lamentation only reveals the inabilityof many humanists to break free of a 19th-century vision of education that sees the humanities as an

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escape from the world of business and science. As Cathy Davidson has forcefully argued in her newbook, Now You See It, [9] this outmoded way of thinking about the humanities as a realm of high-minded cultivation and pleasure in which students contemplate the meaning of life is a relic of theindustrial revolution with its crude dualism of lofty spiritual art vs. mechanized smoking factories, away of thinking that will serve students poorly in meeting the challenges of the 21st century.

Though we have argued in defense of the practical and vocational utility of a humanities education,our argument should in no way be construed as undercutting the aspirations of those in thehumanities who seek an academic career. Indeed, on this score we need to redouble our efforts toincrease public and private funding for higher education and to support unionizing efforts by facultymembers and adjuncts. But even as we fight these battles to expand the academic job market wewould be foolish to turn our backs on alternative forms of employment for humanities graduates whenthey are out there. In this spirit, we applaud both Modern Language Association President RussellBerman [10] and American Historical Association President Anthony Grafton, who, along with theexecutive director of the AHA, James Grossman, have recently urged [11] their organizations toacknowledge that advanced training in the humanities can lead to a variety of careers beyondacademia and have suggested how graduate programs can be adapted for these kinds of careers.

For ultimately, to take advantage of the vocational potential of humanities study as we propose is notto sell out to the corporate world, but to bring the critical perspective of the humanities into that world.It is a perspective that is sorely needed, especially in corporate and financial sectors that have latelybeen notoriously challenged in the ethics department, to say the least. Humanities graduates aretrained to consider the ethical dimensions of experience, linking the humanities with the sciences aswell as with business and looking at both these realms from diverse perspectives. To those whoworry that what we urge would blunt the humanities' critical power, we would reply that it wouldactually figure to increase that power, for power after all is the ability to act in the world.

Paul Jay is professor of English at Loyola University Chicago and the author, most recently, of GlobalMatters: The Transnational Turn in Literary Studies. Gerald Graff is professor of English andeducation at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a past president of the Modern LanguageAssociation.

Source URL: http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2012/01/05/essay-new-approach-defend-value-humanities

Links:[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/opinion/08brooks.html[2] http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9112.html[3] http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo10774861.html[4] http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/06/11/lastprofs[5] http://humanities.byu.edu/humanities_plus/[6] http://maph.uchicago.edu/[7] http://tableau.uchicago.edu/articles/2011/09/bringing-humanities-world[8] http://www.ctsdh.luc.edu/?q=ma_digital_humanities[9] http://www.cathydavidson.com/[10] http://www.mla.org/blog&topic=143[11]http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/10/03/leaders_of_history_association_call_for_new_view_of_the_job_market

Martha Nussbaum “The Silent Crisis” Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, 2010

Robert Pippin “Liberation and the Liberal Arts” Aims of Education Address, University of Chicago, September 19, 2000

T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F C H I C A G O | T h e C o l l e g e

A I M S O F E D U C A T I O N A D D R E S S 2 0 0 0 S E P T E M B E R 1 9

PR ES ENTE D BY : R o be r t P ip p i n

The Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor of Social Thought, Philosophy,

and the College

LIBERATION AND THE LIBERAL ARTS

It is a great privilege to be invited to give this annual talk to the incoming class. The “Aims of

Education” speech has become a ritual at the University of Chicago for the last thirty -eight

years, and I am honored to be able to deliver the address to the first class of the new

millennium, and in the presence of our new president, Don Randel, whom I welcome most

enthusiastically and gratefully to this truly ungovernable place. However much a great honor,

though, it is also very intimidating. It is intimidating not only because, with a topic so sweeping

and complicated, avoiding clichés is hard, but for another, obvious reason. This choice of yours

about where to go to college is one of the three or four “big ones” in your life, right up there

with the choice of a career and a spouse. You all no doubt took advice from parents and

relatives and friends, and probably, for some of you, your decision was affected as much by

where you weren’t accepted as by where you were. But all of you decided to apply here, and the

decision to come here was, for many of you, the first major life decision that you yoursel ves, as

adults determining your own fate, have made. It will shape so much in your future that many of

you are no doubt starting to think: well, why did I come here? This place seems so intense and

serious; what in the world have I gotten myself into? And you might be expecting me to tell

you, and that is what is so intimidating.

After all, yours is a unique and extremely privileged situation, and that always calls for

reflection of some sort. Only an infinitesimally small percentage of people in the world your

age get four years like this, and only a minority of those privileged few, I am sorry to have to

say, really take advantage of such an opportunity. Unless we can start a conversation about

what this unique structure and rare opportunity is all for, and can settle together on some

common aspirations, we might as well drop the pretense of great seriousness that events like

this are supposed to imply, import the fraternities and sororities from Florida State and USC,

build the engineering schools, drop the Common Core, and “vocationalize” away. As already

noted, this is the period of your lives when you start to take over the active management of

your own affairs, when you begin to “lead” those lives, as we say, and in North America

(almost alone in the world, apart from the Oxbridge system in England), we have settled on the

residential liberal arts college as an ideal way to help you do so, to make part of this transition.

Why is that?

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T W O

Let me start with the truisms often uttered in contexts like this. Truisms are, after all,

occasionally true, and they can thus be a good beginning guide. The chief aim of education at

the University of Chicago is a successful “liberal arts” education. (To avoid the confusing

suggestion that you might be here to learn only painting and music and dance, the “arts” bit is

now often dropped and this phrase is shortened to a “liberal education.” But that can be

confusing too, since it suggests that you are here to learn to be more like Ted Kennedy or

Mario Cuomo. So I might as well stick with the old fashioned term, according to which biology

and economics, just as much as literature and philosophy can be studied as a liberal art if

studied in a certain way.) Perhaps no other university in the country takes such an ideal so

seriously or asks itself so interminably what exactly a liberal arts education is, and whether it is

so all-fired important. The topic usually arises here in discussions about general education and

the Core. (This is the place after all that once had a four year, common core requirement!) But

it also describes an ideal to which we all aspire throughout the student’s time here and that

general ideal already evinces the root meaning in the ideal of a “liberality of mind”; that is, the

realization of a certain sort of freedom. The Latin root, liber, means “free” (it is also the Latin

noun for “book,” an odd coincidence that supports the point I am trying to make), and the

very first use of the word “liberal” in English in 1375 was as an adjective in “the liberal arts”

and designated “the objects of study worthy of a free person.” And that is what we are

supposed to teach you: to enable you to become a freer person and this by showing you (so

goes that truism) how to “think for yourself,” to be able to reflect critically on what you have

heretofore just taken for granted; and to learn to do this by an acquaintance with the best that

has been thought and written by human beings. Similarly, as you all have also probably heard,

here you should not just learn the facts and methodologies of modern mathematics and

science; you should learn how a mathematician and a scientist thinks, so that you too can go

forth and design your own experiments and proofs (or appreciate that form of discovery and

reasoning when you encounter it “in the real world”), just as you can learn to think your own

thoughts and write your own elegant, persuasive English prose.

In a university setting such a liberality of mind means attention to “knowledge for its own

sake” and so a certain kind of freedom from the compulsion of the requirements of biological

life, from the satisfaction of unavoidable needs, the press of the pass ions, the everyday and the

practically necessary. (This understanding of freedom, which is obviously connected with a

kind of leisure and privilege, was first formulated and defended over 2,000 years ago by

Aristotle and has influenced the notion of an “ideal” education ever since.) You all know the

caricature of such an “impractical” attitude: the absent minded professor, who is so indifferent

to the practical that he forgets to change clothes and to eat and so forth. That is a figure of

ridicule of course, but it is also, oddly, an expression of envy and in its latent hostility a kind of

suspicion that such a type really can exist with such indifference to the practical world; that he

or she really is so liberated from such cares and can lead a life dedicated to something believed

3

to be of intrinsic value. The opposite of the liberal arts stance or sensibility is then not just

dogmatism and prejudice, but also any kind of over-specialized technical instruction, or

vocationalism, a slavish devotion to the means necessary for mere surviving or existing

comfortably, rather than a devotion to inquiry about the good or the best life, and to the value

of knowledge itself, for its own sake. Or at least that was the older controversy when our most

famous former president, Robert Maynard Hutchins, strode through these hallowed halls; and

it is a debate that is still very relevant.

More recently the suspicion about such a claim to freedom has come from the charge that the

traditional humanistic liberal arts ideal that comes down to us from the Renaissance, the

general ideal that I have just summarized, is itself not liberating but in the service of some

political goal, and rather than foster liberation, actually “serves power” in some way (a class, a

gender, an imperial power), reproduces an enslavement to an elite or to a restrictive,

exclusionary self-understanding. But this last charge is of course not really an objection to the

liberal arts ideal, but an attempt to formulate and pursue it more rigorously, even more

“purely.”

T H R E E

As this simple summary already indicates, any formulation of such a liberal arts ideal (the view

that a certain sort of learning and knowledge might enable one to lead a freer life, even if a

learning and knowledge not directly connected with practical results or technical power) is an

ideal often formulated in response to and as a defense against a perceived threat or attack (such

as that pursuit of such an ideal is a waste of time). The very beginning of this series of lectures

at the University of Chicago was understood as a “response” to such a “threat” when the then

Dean of the College, Alan Simpson, wrote to the Ford Foundation in 1961 requesting funds for

a lecture series on the aims of education because, he claimed, the ideal of a liberal education

was “under pressure everywhere.” Many of the talks presented in this series have that same

tone, responding to various intellectual, economic, professional and practical “attacks” on the

attempt to achieve this liberality of mind through reading books and learning science.

There are lots and lots of reasons for this frequent siege mentality and “man the barricades”

rhetoric. For one things, suspicion of the humanistic university ideal might go very deep in the

modern world we live in. The university after all, is like the Roman Catholic Church or the

military. Together with these, it was one of the very, very few pre-modern or feudal institutions

to make it through the wrenching process of European modernization and to survive in some

recognizable form into the modern world. (For all such institutions, even the funny, medieval

way that we sometimes dress, with robes and gowns and medals and sashes, somehow survived;

not to mention all this gothic architecture.) But even though universities survived, the tone of

suspicion and anxiety about such old institutions in a much altered modern world can be felt

everywhere when the very words “scholastic” or “academic” or “ivory tower” and so forth are

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mentioned as obvious disparagements. And so here we will all sit one day soon, with bio-

technology professors on the “cutting,” even Frankensteinean edge of modern research,

dressed at graduation in the same thirteenth century robes as the Latin Professor and

theologian. It’s an odd place indeed.

That problem of a “fit” in modernity is even worse in the humanities and interpretive social

sciences, where an internal crisis of legitimacy has been going on for a couple of hundred years

now. Such disciplines of course, like philosophy and literature and history, purport to know

something about human beings and the human world that is worth knowing. Because of this

we even insist here that you can’t get a degree without grappling for a while with what they

claim. But everybody also knows that the seats of power and influence in the modern university

are the natural and life sciences. (The exception is economics, but its prestige is largely a result

of its mathematical complexity—it certainly doesn’t stem from its predictive power—and its

ever growing “market share” of undergraduate audiences.) The sciences have an accepted

method for resolving debate and moving on; what they know works, and they have given

human beings a kind of power not even imagined in ancient mythologies. Prior to World War

II, the tone and aura of medieval universities could still be felt at the elite institutions.

University presidents were often classicists (perhaps musicologists); English and history were

often the most popular majors; studying science was a bit plebeian, common, even, I was once

told, “smelly.” After the war, and especially after the cold war and sputnik and the cost of Big

Science and the war on cancer and the breakthroughs of molecular biology and now neurology,

everything has changed. And it would be odd indeed if the “liberal arts ideal” did not look and

feel different to new generations of students and educators. So besides these general

considerations about the status of the liberal arts ideal in modern history, perhaps the first

thing we need to talk about is the relation between this ideal and the various specific pressures

that have come to challenge, even threaten it, and especially those historical pressures that have

emerged in the last fifty years or so. We often understand this ideal best, in other words, i n

terms of what opposes it, offers itself as an alternative, and there is a lot more to say about this

history. What I’d like to do then, after a brief survey of the recent history of American

universities, is to talk then a little bit about the ideal itself in that context, and so to return to

this question of the free, or at least the freer life that we have promised you.

F O U R

We need first to understand what a different sort of place this is, in the context of

contemporary “post-secondary” or “higher” education. There are now 12.3 million

undergraduate students in such post-secondary schools. (I heard a fine talk a year and a half

ago about this subject by a literature professor at the City University of New York, Louis

Menand, and I refer here to some of the statistics that he compiled. The figures are now a bit

out of date, but the corresponding percentages have stayed the same.) Almost half of these

attend two year community colleges, some 5.5 million. So there are 6.8 million of you in

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bachelor degree programs. The vast majority of these, some 4.6 million, are enrolled in public

colleges and universities. So that leaves about 2 million of you (out of this 12.3 million)

enrolled in private, non-profit, four-year colleges. But there are all sorts of such colleges,

ranging from Bob Jones University to Bennington, and if we look at the truly exclusive, very

hard to get into, very expensive liberal arts colleges (that is, those that charge over $20,000

tuition), there are only about 100,000 students, or less than 1 percent of students now in

college or university.

Now Chicago is hard to characterize in this group. Like a very few other top universities, we

have taken the liberal arts college idea from medieval British universities like Oxford and

Cambridge, and combined it with the idea of the research university, pioneered in Germany in

the early nineteenth century. And again, we are not talking about very many such universities;

the Ivy League, Chicago, Stanford, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Rochester, Washington University

and a couple more. But even if we look at all the major research universities, including the

majority which do not have a liberal arts college, only about half of the students who go there

major in a liberal art and get a bachelor’s degree in such a humanities or in a pure, research

oriented social or natural science. Twenty percent of all B.A.s in the U.S. are now awarded in

business; 10 percent in education; 7 percent in the health professions. When I taught at the

University of California, by far the biggest undergraduate major, and growing every year, was

“communications,” whatever that is. It has been reported that there are almost twice as many

undergraduate degrees conferred every year in a field that calls itself “protective services” a s in

all foreign languages and literatures combined.

So the category of “higher education” is a huge tent, with all kinds of various beasts in it, so

much so that there may be no such thing as “the American higher education system.”

Moreover, if we also look historically just at the study of the liberal arts, apart from the

institutional question, then we can note another motive for the siege mentality. The proportion

of undergraduate degrees awarded annually in the liberal arts has been declining for a hundred

years now (apart from a brief increase between 1955 and 1970). And this slide is all greatly

complicated by one development: the fact that we are now living, or have been living since

around 1975 or so, in a period of a massive, unstable, nervous reaction to the greatest

expansionary period in the history of education anywhere. Between 1945 and 1975 the number

of American undergraduates increased by almost 500 percent and the number of graduate

students (and this is truly an amazing figure) increased by nearly 900 percent. More professors

were hired in the 1960s alone than had been hired in the 325-year history of American higher

education to that point.

What happened then, after and in reaction to this great expansion, is complicated, but it is at

least obvious that in this super-heated period, colleges and universities had over-expanded and

a period of retrenchment and cut-back was in order. The draft and the Vietnam war ended; so

did the baby-boomer surge in the demographics, and a very serious recession, mysteriously

6

accompanied by runaway inflation, set in. Universities and colleges, facing rapidly declining

applications and declining admissions had to compete ferociously for students, and students

themselves faced post-college prospects far more uncertain and competitive than at any time in

the history of the Republic. Said in a simple formula, the liberal arts—study, reflection and

learning for its own liberating sake—require a certain sort of leisure, security, and peace. In a

situation of anxiety, uncertainty and competition, such a climate can be ever rarer. Obviously

all these pressures since 1975 have changed the atmosphere of higher education, bringing with

it some healthy forms of skepticism and doubt about some of the old liberal art veriti es, but

also a great uncertainty and anxiety among, and a great pressure on, the liberal arts faculty. This

sometimes led to a furious and near suicidal self-criticism, or an attempt at a kind of populism,

a populist attack on the high culture/low culture distinction, or an odd, dizzying, nervous

susceptibility to academic fads (or market trends), new ones year in and year out. (And actually

the effects of such anxiety and uncertainty about exactly what “college is for” can be charted

even before 1975. In the period between 1962 and 1983, the percentage of students who

majored in foreign languages and literatures declined by 58 percent; in philosophy they declined

by 60 percent; in English by 72 percent, and in mathematics by 67 percent. Where did they all

go? Well, in that same period, the number of business majors increased 87 percent.) So while

intuitively, one might think that a place like the University of Chicago has the resources and the

reputation and clout and faculty to think of itself as simply doing better what all universities

aspire to do; that we represent a kind of peak, the Platonic Ideal or perfection of what

universities should be and what other places cannot afford to be, in a situation like this, where

we look so different from what goes on in the rest of the 99 percent of post-secondary

education, it is not hard to imagine why this system might feel under threat, and why they and

we might feel that we have become an anachronism; hardly a perfection.

In other words, over-expansion, market uncertainties, economic anxiety, the need to justify the

expense of a college education in terms of a good rate of return in future employment have all

made that 99 percent to 1 percent ratio even more significant, has increased the pressure on

places like Chicago to move to the norm, and can make the ideal of a certain sort of freedom

from practical concerns seem so unrealistic, when the jockeying for position in the practical

world is so intense. The idea, in this climate, of concentrating on Elizabethan literature or

linguistics or astrophysics or Greek philosophy can look a little like playing solitaire on the

deck of a sinking Titanic. (And, by the way, we are about to look even more different in the

years ahead. The experts say that the next waves in higher education will be for-profit

universities and on-line or distance learning—very likely some combination of both of these—

and if those catch on and start to dominate the market then residential liberal arts colleges with

merit-based, need-blind admissions and some sort of education in a core curriculum, might

begin to look to the general public like fox hunting clubs or monasteries.)

7

F I V E

So that was (by and large anyway) the original hope for the liberal arts, and those are the

pressures that seem to be squeezing it. In the face of that pressure, what can be said for the

liberal arts ideal? In terms of the practical survival of that ideal and such colleges, the right

response is probably, “Who knows?” My guess is that there is no great danger that Chicago will

be turning out sanitation engineers, disc jockeys and industrial arts majors anytime soon. There

will always be people who find a home in books and research, and always be those who are

smart enough to know that there is much of intrinsic value for the rest of their lives in

wrestling for a while with difficult ideas and in appreciating the beauty of mathematics or

science. Remember that we probably need, all of us in this small boat, only a couple of hundred

thousand recruits a year or so, and it’s a big country. The ultimate fate of the ideal, the strength

of belief in it, commitment to it, its perseverance over the next century or two centuries, is

another matter. That depends on what we believe about it and how we believe it. I would like

to spend the second half of this talk discussing that.

S I X

Imagine that the question is whether you are here at the University of Chicago freel y, of your

own free will; whether your coming here reflects or expresses you, whether you can see

yourself in this kind of role. Obviously the first condition that has to be satisfied for you to be

able to answer “yes” is that no one coerced or forced or tricked you into coming here. If your

parents told you that you had gotten into Brown, drove you here and dropped you off, you

would have a clear case that you did not come here freely; this was not your doing. Likewise

with being coerced or threatened to come here, and I certainly hope none of you has any such

stories to tell.

These are all fairly obvious, external conditions. No one or nothing from “the outside” should

be constraining or coercing or unduly pushing or pulling. But there are also clearly “internal”

conditions that have to be satisfied. You have to be able to stand in the right relation to your

own life for your being here to be the result of a free choice. No one may have coerced or

forced or tricked you to be here, but, for example, if you have felt absolutely obsessed since

your were six years old with the idea of going to the University of Chicago, and have no idea

why, then you also did not come here freely, even though nobody else, just you, is responsible

for your coming here. Compulsions like this are rare and the example is fanciful of course, but

the possibility already illuminates one of the oldest ideas about freedom in the Western

tradition. This is that the only real form of genuine unfreedom or true slavery is ignorance; the

only true form of freedom is wisdom, ultimately knowledge of what is best. In this fanciful

case, unless you have some idea of why it is better for you to be here rather than anywhere else

or at any other university or whatever, then you did not come here free ly. There is an element

of alienation or strangeness to you in your presence here. Some crucial part of your life, while it

8

was in fact produced by you, does not truly reflect the “you” that you understand yourself to be

and identify with, and so this decision cannot in the deepest sense be yours.

And this sort of intuition represents something essential to the notion of liberation, liberality of

mind, or freedom, promised by a liberal arts education. Now this idea, some of you may have

begun to wonder, already may sound a bit suspect. (”Is this guy telling us that the main reason

to come here is to be able to find out later why we really came here and whether it was really a

good idea?”) Well, yes, that is what I am trying to say, and I hope it does not sound as strange

as that formulation makes it. There are a very great many elements, terms, values, aspirations,

that have gone into the decisions you have made and will make that are so opaque and

mysterious to you, to all of us, that we cannot really be said to be masters of decisions that rely

on them.

S E V E N

Think of it this way. in one of his many hilarious novels about modern campus life, the British

novelist David Lodge depicts a game played by particularly brave (and quite drunk) professors.

The point of this game is to admit something even more embarrassing than the professor who

went before you, to try to trump your predecessor and ultimately to trump everyone else by

revealing the most truly embarrassing, humiliating fact about yourself. What each of them is

trying to do is to name a book that, given his or her academic specialty, it would be taken for

granted that he or she had read several times, but which they had in fact never read. So if a

professor of Elizabethan literature admits that he has never read Hamlet, the next person, say a

philosophy professor must try to top that, by admitting say, that she had never read anything

by Plato. And then the German professor would have to admit that he couldn’t read anything

by Thomas Mann because the German was too difficult, and then the history professor would

have to admit that even though he was a leading expert in modern German history, he couldn’t

read German books at all. And so on.

It is not too difficult to imagine all of us playing a version of the game where we try to name an

idea crucial to our understanding of ourselves and of the modern world, and which has played a

critical role in some of our decisions, some of the policies we have formulated, and many of the

judgments and even condemnations we have formulated about others, but which we have no

clue how to define and, no matter how much we have relied on it, no clue at all how to defend

the idea from objections. Examples come easily to mind to all of us. What, after all, is a

“right”? What does the notion of a natural or human right mean to delineate? What other kinds

are there? Why are we said to have them? How many do we have? Do we have a right to

interesting jobs? To a cool pair of shoes? To own and eat animals? Why or why not? What do

we mean when we say something is beautiful? If we claim that that term “means something

different to each person” what is it that means something different to each person? How

important is the beautiful? More important than the creation of more jobs? How much more or

9

less important? Why do groups of strangers like to gather together in the dark and watch a

small group of other people pretend to be people who they are not, doing absolutely horrible

things to each other, while also pretending that they are not observed? Why do you do this, or

what is the point of theater? When did we start to do this in our civilization, and what might

explain this origin? Why did people just like us, perhaps in some sense, better than us, like

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, own slaves? Could you explain what a nuclear

reaction really is? What it really means to be genetically disposed to something? And so on. The

point of the game would be to admit something even more obviously important to you and

some decision or judgment of yours than your predecessor’s example, and which you would in

principle have to defend in order to explain some action or opinion of yours, but which you

could not claim to understand.

Being better able to do all that explaining and defending is clearly a kind of liberation because

the more of such understanding you possess the more you are able to stand behind what you

do, acknowledge it as your own, especially when challenged by others, because you can stand

behind it, explain it and defend it to some degree, to yourself and others. Of course, there are

writers and thinkers who believe that this is all a mistaken way to look at it. They believe that

what you do more genuinely expresses you and is freely done only if we get rid of all this

reflection and self-consciousness and opinions and theories which are very likely just views of

others to which we have become subject, and that we should strive to achieve a state of ever

more intense emotional immediacy, or spontaneity and direct expression, not filtered through

theories and thoughts.

Well, pursuing these issues could take us pretty far afield. My version of the David Lodge game

was only meant to illuminate in a very broad way why a better form of self -understanding

might make it possible to say that you led a life more “your own.” Around the sixteenth and

seventeenth century or so, when it began to seem to many people that a life belonged

essentially to the finite individual him- (and eventually her- ) self, not to God, or to one’s

master or lord or fatherland or husband or father, the question of how we could come to

acknowledge our deeds as truly our own, and the roles of self-consciousness and expanded

knowledge in that possibility, loomed as large items on the agenda, and we are here, in the kind

of university we have, partly because of all that.

E I G H T

But I want to close with a final consideration about the role of books, research science, history,

art, music—the academic enterprise—in this liberationist ideal. One way of understanding the

possibility of a free life—“your own life”—is to consider which of your past decisions you

could truly be said to be able to “stand behind,” where that means being able to defend or

justify them when challenged, or even which you could claim to understand. “Having reasons”

in this sense for what you did, having something to say about “why,” is a general condition for

10

some event being considered an action of yours at all, and not having any reasons means it is

very hard to understand any link between you and what conduct you engage in. If the question

is why you came to the University of Chicago, or are concentrating in chemistry, or why you

stopped speaking to a friend, and you replied, “I don’t know, I just felt like it,” it is very hard

to see concentrating in chemistry or not speaking to a friend as any sort of deed performed by

you. It really does look like something that happened to you rather than like something you did.

But if this is true, what is it to have such reasons, and when are they satisfying enough for the

deeds to count as “claimed” by you, as yours? The issues that I have just been talking about

assume that a deeper awareness of the possible options, a broader sense of the sorts of relevant

justifications, a better familiarity with the most crucial possible positions and objections, and so

forth, can be understood as “liberating,” making such evaluations freer by in essence increasing

the quality of the reasons you can give. The same can be said for understanding historical

change and coming to understand why options are framed for us now as they are, why things

used to seem so different, and for understanding other great civilizations and their histories.

Such reasons become forms of thought that you do not just inherit, but can take up knowingly

as your own. If this transition happens at all, it has to happen some time, and this is the time

set aside for it to happen for a small group of young people; i.e., you and your colleagues in

liberal arts colleges. If all this works well, where once one might have seen before one only a

small, narrow path of decision with very few options, might look broader and more various,

surrounded by less darkness and uncertainty; much that seemed necessary and fated, we could

now understand, could have been otherwise, and might be otherwise in the future, and that is

all certainly “liberating.”

But it might also seem a bit unrealistic, even utopian. And so it would, if we think of all this as

occurring simply because certain books are assigned in general education courses and certain

courses are required. If a university prides itself simply on having assigned such books, and

prides itself on insisting that students have a look at them, then most of what I have been

saying would indeed be very hard to connect with such a self-satisfied and superficial notion of

a “liberal arts education.” It matters of course which books or themes make up a university’s

idea of itself, how much and what sort of math and science the university requires of its

students. But what matters much more is the way in which faculty and students engage those

books, or other books, or various ideas. And that essentially means the way they engage each

other. Let me close with a remark about that.

N I N E

Since almost everything of importance and controversy in human life involves some sort of

normative question, a choice that demands evaluation and a decision about what ought to be or

ought to be done, the issue of what sorts of reasons are appropriate, what it would be to be

confidently in charge of one’s existence is a vast, unmanageable topic here. But there is

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something peculiar about the nature of these reasons worth mentioning in a discussion about

the liberal arts.

These evaluative questions, and the arguments about them, have special characteristics. On the

one hand, the issues that are raised are unavoidable and as serious and important as one can

imagine. On the other hand, there has hardly been the kind of convergence in our civilization

about such evaluative issues that there has been about matters of fact. Most of you are

intelligent enough to begin finding things to disagree with already in what I’ve said today.

There is no decision procedure for any of this. In any such attempt to improve the quality of

the reasons we give each other or are willing to accept, there is no equivalent to the test tube

changing color if we get the right answer or the bacteria dying if we find the right drug. Our

odds on being better warned against false leads, dead ends and so forth go up if we can find a

way of learning from what the best minds ever had to say about all of this. But of course, the

question of what Aristotle or Dante or Karl Marx really meant is just as disputed as any

possible “answer” to such questions.

What then can we rely on for guidance in the pursuit of such issues; how could we hope for

any sort of even small progress in such endeavors? Well, the answer embodied in these liberal

arts colleges is very simple. We depend on each other. After al l, what it is to have a reason for

what you believe, to be able to acknowledge it as yours, is to have something to offer to

someone whom your action affects or injures or provokes to question you. And part of what it

is for the reason to be adequate is for that offering to be accepted, at least ideally, in conditions

where it is the proposed reason itself that is doing the persuading. Of course in deciding

whether to accept what someone proposes, we are always looking to what, independent of us,

might make the reason a good one, but that too is often in dispute, and the conversation then

goes another round.

Put another way: I expect you’ll discover shortly that a great deal of what goes on here is

arguing; sometimes friendly, sometimes heated, and it can sometimes look like egotism,

grandstanding, envy, or just plain bullying. But at bottom, this endless conversation we have

invited you to join is a kind of “liberal arts research.” We are always trying to find out what sort

of reason will pass muster, among colleagues in the profession and here on campus, among

professors and graduate students and among graduate students, and certainly and most

frequently between professors and you, and among yourselves. By means of these

conversations, we are both trying to hold each other in check, and to help each other see what

sort of account or justification or interpretation might be adequate, might be enough. For this

to work at all, we have to be able to hear you out; hence the emphasis on discussion seminars;

you have to get to know each other relatively well; hence the idea of residential campuses; and

we all have to approach this with the right attitude and openness; hence talks like this one.

Someone out to convert people, to enlighten the ignorant, or even someone a little too quick

and eager to think of himself as a radical critic, as “speaking truth to power” distort and

12

impede this conversation. With the kinds of questions, of the magnitude and seriousness, that

we all will discuss here, we have to depend pretty heavily on each other for any clarity and even

partial satisfaction in addressing them, and none of that will work if you play the part of the

timid, or the too-cool, or the angry, alienated student, and I play the part of the know it all, or

the bored, aloof, arrogant professor, or the stand-up comic or ironic cynic. You will find, I

think, that most of us will do our part, and it remains true every year that the University’s

traditions and the wise judgments of our admissions office ensure that it is very likely that most

of you will too. Better conversations about great things make for better reasons, and better

reasons make for freer lives. And as one of my favorite writers, Henry James, put it simply:

‘Without your life, what have you got?”

You only get one college experience in your life, and my colleagues and I are not so modest

that we can’t say: we think that you have all chosen wisely in coming here. I urge you to enter

this conversation rather than just listen to it, and, I hope I’ve made clear, I urge that not just

for your sake, but for mine. Thank you for your attention on this warm afternoon, and, once

again this week, welcome to the University of Chicago.

Division of the Humanities Draft White Paper “Global Languages Initiative”

Global Languages Initiative

Draft White Paper

Division of the Humanities

April 2013

Global Languages Initiative April 2013

 

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INTRODUCTION Language is at the center of what it means to be human and is instrumental in all humanistic pursuits. With language, we understand others, describe, plan, narrate, learn, remember, persuade, argue, reason, and think. The Global Languages Initiative (GLI) is a purposeful investment in the people and pedagogical resources needed to lead the academy in language exploration at all levels. The GLI positions the University of Chicago to advance the understanding of language, its role as a medium for experience and culture, and its impact on human development and wellbeing; to produce undergraduate and graduate alumni who have the cultural sensitivity and capacity for critical thought that are required for leadership in a global world; and to develop modern tools for language teaching and acquisition that promote lifelong language learning and appreciation. In the context of scholarly pursuit, liberal education, and globalization, the usefulness of studying foreign languages and cultures should no longer be a matter of debate. Yet today many well-regarded American universities are shortsightedly choosing to respond to temporary economic pressures in ways that have devastating long-term consequences: eliminating modern European languages, such as Italian or German, and foundational fields of study such as Classics. These rash decisions undermine the fundamental ability of scholars to conduct research and produce new contributions to knowledge. The Division of the Humanities adamantly rejects such counterproductive and ill-considered measures and maintains that the global relevance of the American university is inextricably bound to providing students with the skills to navigate cultures other than their own and to producing the next generations of scholars and teachers. Admittedly, moreover, the folly of our peers in failing to invest—indeed, in divesting—in this educational mandate gives the University of Chicago an opportunity to make a significant and notable intervention at this crucial moment. As the University embarks on a new phase of global expansion, we intend to build on our history of excellence in language research and instruction and to reaffirm and reposition our historic commitment to the value of language acquisition. The Global Languages Initiative is designed to complement the University’s growing international programs and has three explicit goals:

Ø Recruit, retain, and support the best faculty members in linguistics and global literatures who use languages to probe the richness of human experience and produce enduring scholarship

Ø Lead the academy in experimental and computational linguistic research to understand language phenomena with potential medical, historical, and economic consequences

Ø Teach language in new and more effective ways by developing new technologies in language instruction and providing new models that will be disseminated throughout the academy

WHERE WE STAND The Division of the Humanities’ sustained commitment to language is fourfold, encompassing (1) language research, in which language itself is the object of study; (2) language acquisition, in which language learning is crucial for deep historical research and scholarship; (3) language acquisition as a gateway into cultural knowledge; and (4) language pedagogy, by which innovative and technologically sophisticated tools are developed and deployed for improving language learning at UChicago and in higher education more broadly.

1. Advanced Research on Language Research on languages as objects of study is integral to scholarship in the Humanities. The University of Chicago is a leader in documenting ancient and endangered languages through the

Global Languages Initiative April 2013

 

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production of grammars and dictionaries such as the 90-year Chicago Assyrian Dictionary project as well as dictionaries of Demotic, Hittite, and Sumerian, and of indigenous languages of North America, such as Meskwakie and Eskimo. The Digital Media Archive, established in 1914, houses material on more than 300 languages and dialects, many listed as endangered and vulnerable on the UNESCO Language Vitality Scale. Because language is the vehicle by which human knowledge is recorded, preserving and providing access to such materials—while continuing to develop advanced modes of searching and using them—is critically important to the cultural heritage of both the United States and the world. One of the first collaborative projects selected for the Neubauer Family Collegium for Culture and Society, for example, is an investigation of the cultural and social contexts and the structural properties of the world’s four “pristine” historical writing systems from Mesopotamia, China, Egypt, and Mesoamerica.

Scholars in our Department of Linguistics, recently ranked number one in the country by the National Research Council, investigate the way languages are structured in and by the human mind, how they are learned by children and adults, how they shape and influence an individual’s perception of the world, and how they are used in society. UChicago linguists are engaged in research that has the potential to impact society, public policy, and healthcare in dramatic ways, from understanding the cognitive and neurological benefits of learning new languages to exploring the impact of linguistic phenomena on the law. Two scholars, for example, are leading a series of lab experiments to measure the brain’s activity during language comprehension and to distinguish how the brain uniquely processes linguistic knowledge; asking questions about the cognitive and neurological benefits of second-language learning, their research builds on studies that link bilingualism to the improved executive function of the brain as well as to the delayed onset of symptoms in Alzheimer’s patients. Another project, in which a linguist is collaborating with a legal scholar, uses computational approaches to large datasets from historical English usage in jurisprudence and other areas to examine the meanings of words and phrases that appear in the US Constitution; this work is providing profound insights into current constitutional debates, including, for example, those surrounding the second amendment. This collaborative imperative is also manifest in the project on sign language and gesture funded by the Neubauer Collegium, a project led by linguists and psychologists, which will explore the formative role our bodies play in communication.

2. Language Acquisition for Research Scholars across the University rely on the knowledge and study of language when pursuing their research activities. Expert knowledge of the languages used in primary and secondary sources is required for advanced scholarship in almost all humanistic and social-science fields: literature, art history, religion, philosophy, political science, economics, and law cannot be studied exclusively through an Anglophone lens. Scholars require language facility in order to conduct research: first, to access the primary texts and objects of study, and second, to engage with the centuries of scholarly literature and accumulation of the knowledge of our predecessors. A scholar of medieval European astronomy, for example, must know Latin, Greek, Arabic, and medieval English to understand the primary sources and also German, French, and Italian to build upon the historical scholarship of previous generations. So too must students of nineteenth-century German music history, French Renaissance art history, or Roman legal systems have full control of multiple languages in order to explore the richness of their fields and to produce enduring scholarly contributions of their own. In this respect, nearly all faculty members in the Humanities and many in the Social Sciences and other areas of the University

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are engaged on a daily basis with languages other than English and are deeply invested in language instruction. 3. Language Acquisition for Cultural Knowledge According to the National Foreign Language Center, 82 percent of US residents are monolingual; the United States is the only industrialized country where language study is often optional rather than mandatory. But to be monolingual is to be monocultural, with far-reaching consequences for national security and commerce. This narrowness of focus was glaringly evident on September 11, 2001, when the Department of State found that few of its officers were proficient in Arabic and that the entire US government had fewer than six employees with any knowledge at all of the languages of Afghanistan (specifically Pashto and Dari, both taught at UChicago). Even now, more than a decade later, only 380 of the approximately 7,600 foreign-service officers are identified as speaking or reading Arabic at a minimum professional proficiency. Similarly, American business leaders are keenly aware that the lingua franca of the global economy is not always English and that knowledge of the language of the country in which a business is conducted is crucial. The economy in the developed and developing world is a global enterprise, and economic decisions of a particular country will be filtered through the rich heritage of its political and historical practices. To succeed, economic leaders must be knowledgeable about local culture, the sine qua non of which will always be the language of the people.

Today, the University’s Division of the Humanities administers language instruction in over 50 languages through nine departments, more than nearly any other North American university. Each year, the Division sees over 5,000 enrollments in language courses that serve students from the College, the graduate divisions, and the professional schools. Our College’s liberal arts curriculum requires that all students demonstrate competence in a foreign language equivalent to one year of college-level study. While this is certainly not enough for fluency, it is intended to be the first—and not the last—language contact for a student and often complements opportunities in one of the College’s 17 study-abroad programs. The University of Chicago firmly believes that language studies should not be merely instrumental—a skill to communicate information—but should serve as the entryway into new cultures. The College therefore encourages every undergraduate to spend time abroad, using this opportunity to deepen language proficiency and to gain serious cultural, historical, political, and economic exposure to other parts of the world. Such experiences shape our students’ academic lives and future careers, promote awareness of their own cultural biases, and cultivate the kind of lifelong appreciation for difference that is essential to global citizenship. 4. Language and Pedagogy As the teaching and learning of languages now moves beyond the classroom and into our global centers in Beijing, New Delhi, and beyond, we are positioned to play an ever-larger role in all aspects of scholarly inquiry. In 2006, the Division of the Humanities and the College, with a $1.8 million grant from the Provost, established the Center for the Study of Languages on the second floor of Cobb Hall as a shared resource for all students, instructors, and faculty members engaged in language pedagogy. Now about to be renamed, more aptly, the Center for Language Teaching and Learning, the Center brings together interactive “smart” classrooms, language labs, and archival material in a single location. Designed by RADA Architects, a Chicago-based company known for creating technologically advanced interiors for teachers and students, the

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Center supports innovative instruction in all languages and across the entire campus. The Center for Language Teaching and Learning is poised now to make incisive interventions in language pedagogy itself: the ways languages are taught by native and non-native speakers and acquired by monolingual and multilingual learners. Unlike the traditional language lab of yesterday, where students were isolated in cubicles while listening to recorded exercises with little connection to meaningful social and intellectual exchanges, the Center’s varied spaces encourage instructors and students to interact with one another, for example, to view live television feeds, contemporary films, and video examples of native speakers performing a variety of speech acts. Instructors benefit from lectures, pedagogical workshops, and classrooms equipped with current technological tools such as laptops and tablets to enhance instruction. A number of faculty members have developed language pedagogy projects with the support of the Center, such as Kanji Alive, a web application designed to help language students learn to read and write kanji, the modern form of Japanese characters. The Center also supports the professional development of the Division’s team of language lecturers, specialists in language pedagogy who coordinate language instruction and who supervise the pedagogical training of our graduate students—themselves the next generation of language advocates and teachers.

WHAT’S NEXT This broad landscape of language scholarship and language learning offers numerous opportunities for scholarly intervention and pedagogical innovation. In 2012, Martha Roth, Dean of the Humanities, established the position of Deputy Dean for Languages to develop new initiatives, to meet challenges relating to language research strategically and deliberately, to foster and expand successful programs, and to signal boldly and decisively the importance of language research and learning at our institution.

1. Investing in Human Capital A critical step in advancing the goals of the GLI is renewing and indeed demonstrably strengthening our investment in the people—faculty, lecturers, and graduate students—who research language, who use language as a tool for exploring human culture, and who teach language at the University. Recruiting and retaining the best faculty members in Linguistics as well as the departments most closely aligned with the University’s global centers (East Asian Languages and Civilizations, South Asian Languages and Civilizations, Romance Languages and Literatures, etc.) are crucial to our strategic priorities, as is developing a systematic program of language professionalization for graduate students whom we are training to become the next generation of language educators. Finally and crucially, we seek to recruit and develop the undervalued resource of our language lecturers, those instructors and pedagogy experts who are influencing teaching methods and developing the most current pedagogical tools such as modern grammar manuals and interactive technologies.

2. Establishing an Institute for Computational and Experimental Linguistics (ICEL) The University of Chicago’s strength in linguistics scholarship is rooted in a commitment to supporting experimental and computational research. In the last five years, we have recruited no fewer than five scholars who employ large datasets, complex technologies, and precise medical instruments such as fMRI machines in their linguistic research. These tools have transformed the kinds of questions linguists ask about the processes and effects of language learning on the

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human brain. They also expand the potential for such research to affect language learning and educational policy, as well as other fields that are concerned with human communication practices. At this moment of transition for linguistics as a discipline, we believe that the establishment of an Institute for Computational and Experimental Linguistics will provide both the space and technological support necessary for UChicago’s scholars to impact language discovery and to lead linguistic research globally. 3. Realizing the Potential of the Center for Language Teaching and Learning (CLTL) Since its inception seven years ago, the space occupied by the Center for Language Teaching and Learning (formerly the Center for the Study of Languages) has been a welcoming home for students and instructors throughout campus. As a natural intellectual gathering place, the CLTL is the ideal location to realize the new vision for integrated language instruction now emerging from the University of Chicago. A committee chaired by the Deputy Dean for Languages and composed of language lecturers, literature professors, and graduate students is currently vetting candidates for the Center’s first full-time director. We are seeking a nationally recognized and innovative leader who is dedicated to language pedagogy and language acquisition, and who will realize the full potential of the CLTL as a University-wide resource and as a force throughout the academy. The new director will be engaged actively in the teaching of languages, will have expertise in second-language acquisition, will oversee the pedagogy training of our graduate students pursuing careers in which their language-teaching skills will be paramount, and will be able to foster the development and implementation of new technologies in language instruction. Most important for the realization of the full potential of the newly envisioned CLTL, the director will build bridges to units across campus and establish collaborations with other universities.

THE IMPACT OF PHILANTHROPY In partnership with philanthropists who share our commitment to the value of languages, the University of Chicago will set a shining example for other institutions. We are uniquely positioned to make this intervention by our previous investments; by our current strengths in language learning, instruction, and research; and most importantly by our values and clear mission. The case that knowing more than one of the world’s languages is crucial to our world circumstances was made by Admiral James Stavridis in a February 4, 2013, blog post. Admiral Stavridis—Supreme Allied Commander in Europe and Commander of US European Command, and a descendant of Greeks living in Turkey who emigrated to the United States—notes that training in foreign languages brings the “attendant skills of regional expertise and cultural understanding” and quotes Charlemagne (742–814), King of France, King of Italy, and the first Holy Roman Emperor, whose military conquests and political reforms fostered a cultural and religious revival throughout Europe: “to know another language is to have a second soul.” “In this rapidly globalizing 21st century world,” Stavridis writes, “that simple statement summarizes the gift of regional expertise, cultural understanding, and the ability to communicate directly in the language of an ally, partner, or colleague.” Endowing students with this capacity is not only our desire but also our responsibility as a modern global research university.

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APPENDIX LANGUAGES TAUGHT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ACADEMIC YEAR 2012–2013 Akkadian

ASL

Arabic

Arabic Modern Standard

Aramaic/Syriac

Armenian

Aymara

Bangla/Bengali

Basque

Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian

Catalan

Chinese

Coptic

Czech

Egyptian

French

Georgian

German

Greek

Haitian Kreyol

Hebrew, Classical

Hebrew, Modern

Hindi

Hittite

Italian

Japanese

Korean

Latin

Malayalam

Marathi

Nahuatl

Norwegian

Pali

Panjabi

Persian (Farsi)

Polish

Portuguese

Russian

Sanskrit

Semitics

Spanish

Swahili

Tamil

Telegu

Tibetan

Old Turkic

Turkish

Turkish, Ottoman

Urdu

Uzbek

Modern Language Association “Learning Another Language: Goals and Challenges” April 2011

Modern Language Association (MLA)

Learning Another Language: Goals and Challenges

The Executive Council approved the following statement in April 2011.

http://www.mla.org/ec_language_learning

In recent years language programs in the United States have been closed, and the federal government has reduced its support for language education. Because of the fundamental importance of language learning, it is urgent to resist these cutbacks.

It is the obligation of educational institutions to provide all students with opportunities to acquire fluency in a second language. Studying a nonnative language gives students the tools to appreciate other cultures. It enables students to recognize how languages work and to gain a more thoughtful understanding of their native language: by pursuing a second language, students learn how to use their first language with greater precision and purpose. In addition, knowledge of a second language serves students well in the interconnected world: a second language opens the door to job opportunities in the global economy and makes more media accessible, enriching public discussion of current issues. Finally, language knowledge is critical to humanistic inquiry into the cultures and histories of the world.

The Modern Language Association has supported the teaching and study of languages for more than a century. The MLA’s 2007 report Foreign Languages and Higher Education called for a transformation of university language curricula. In 2009, the MLA issued a survey report on language enrollment, documenting continued increase in student enrollments in college language courses and testifying to strong student interest in all the top ten languages studied in the United States.

Yet despite student demand for language courses and public recognition of the opportunities of globalization, many college language programs have been reduced, closed, or threatened with closure. These actions deny students critical learning opportunities and impoverish their education. Preventing students from participating in college-level language learning does them a profound disservice, diminishes our cultural capacities, and isolates the American public from the conversations of the rest of the world.

The MLA calls for the development of programs to provide every American college graduate with advanced fluency in a nonnative language. American monolingualism is an impediment to effective participation in a multilingual world. More than 80% of Americans are monolingual, while 50% of Europeans over the age of fifteen can carry on a conversation in a second language. The European Union has set the goal of having all students learn two nonnative languages. Other advanced industrial countries, such as Canada, have been able to provide widespread education in more than one language. Enabling all students in the United States to achieve advanced fluency in a second language is a realistic goal, but it will require building strong language programs, beginning in the elementary schools and continuing with higher level learning opportunities in college.

The MLA is prepared to consult with colleges and universities on strategies to strengthen their language programs. We call on higher education leaders to demonstrate creativity in envisioning

better language programs that reach ever more students. Instead of shutting language programs, let us keep the door of learning open to the languages and cultures of the world.

Endorsements

The organizations below have endorsed the MLA’s statement or issued similar statements on the importance of language learning:

American Sociological Association

American Studies Association

Association for Asian Studies

History of Science Society

Latin American Studies Association

Linguistic Society of America

Medieval Academy of America

Middle East Studies Association

National Council of Teachers of English

Rhetoric Society of America

Modern Language Association “Statement on Language Learning and United States National Policy” May 2012

Modern Language Association (MLA)

Statement on Language Learning and United States National Policy

The Executive Council approved the following statement at its May 2012 meeting.

http://www.mla.org/ec_us_language_policy

The MLA regards the learning of languages other than English as vital to an understanding of the

world; such learning serves as a portal to the literatures, cultures, historical perspectives, and human

experiences that constitute the human record. Pragmatically, we believe in the value of becoming

part of a global conversation in which knowledge of English is often not enough, and the security

and future of our country depend on accurately understanding other cultures through their linguistic

and cultural practices.

We believe this view should be uncontroversial; anyone interested in the long-term vitality and

security of the United States should recognize that it will be detrimental for Americans to remain

overwhelmingly monolingual and ill informed about other parts of this increasingly interdependent

world. We are therefore deeply alarmed by the drastic and disproportionate budget cuts in recent

years to programs that fund advanced language study. We believe that advanced language study is

important for the same reasons many policy makers, advisers, and elected officials do: Americans

need to be literate about the languages and cultures of the United States’ major trading partners, and

Americans need to be literate in the so-called strategic languages important to national security. But

we note that national policy can be and has been considered in more expansive terms: the Fulbright

International Education Exchange Program was created in 1946 explicitly to “increase mutual

understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries,” and since

then 310,000 Fulbright scholars have served as unofficial American ambassadors, practicing person-

to-person diplomacy around the globe.

We also believe that language learning should be supported for additional reasons: because there is a

wealth of heritage languages spoken in American families and communities, because one learns

more about one’s native language in the course of learning a foreign language, and because recent

research suggests that language learning enhances critical brain functions throughout an individual’s

life. For all these reasons, the MLA views the study of languages and literatures as central to

American education at every level.

Anthony C. Woodbury “What is an endangered language?” Linguistic Society of America, 2009

What is anendangeredlanguage?

The Linguistic Society of America was foundedin 1924 for the advancement of the scienti�c studyof language. The Society serves its nearly 7,000personal and institutional members through schol-arly meetings, publications, and special activitiesdesigned to advance the discipline.

The Society holds its Annual Meeting in earlyJanuary each year and publishes a quarterly jour-nal, LANGUAGE and the LSA Bulletin. Among itsspecial education activities are the LinguisticInstitutes held every other summer in odd-num-bered years and co-sponsored by a host university.

The web site for the Society (http://www.lsadc.org)includes a Directory of Programs in Linguistics inthe United States and Canada, The Field ofLinguistics (brief, nontechnical essays describingthe discipline and its sub�elds), and statementsand resolutions issued by the Society on matterssuch as language rights, the English-only/English-plus debate, bilingual education, and ebonics.

1325 18th St, NW, Suite 211Washington, DC 20036-6501(202) 835-1714lsa@lsadc.orghttp://www.lsadc.orgDuplicate as needed.

Linguistic Society of America

Written by Anthony C. Woodbury

Edited by Betty Birner

who, as recently as the 1960s, were punished for speak-ing their native languages at boarding schools.

Is language extinction sudden or gradual?Both. The fate of a language can be changed in a singlegeneration if it is no longer being learned by children.This has been true for some Yupik Eskimo communitiesin Alaska, where just 20 years ago all of the childrenspoke Yupik; today the youngest speakers of Yupik insome of these communities are in their 20s, and thechildren speak only English.

Likewise, Scots Gaelic was spoken on Cape BretonIsland, Nova Scotia, until the 1940s, but by the 1970s thelanguage was no longer being learned by children. Inother cases, languages have declined much more slowly.

Iroquoian languages like Onondaga and Mohawk, spoken in upstate New York and adjacent parts ofCanada, have been declining for over two centuries; yetthey are still spoken today by older adults and, in thecase of Mohawk, some younger people as well.

How many languages ar e endangered?According to one count, 6,703 separ ate languages werespoken in the world in 1996. Of these, 1000 were spokenin the Americas, 2011 in Africa, 225 in Europe, 2165 inAsia, and 1320 in the Paci�c, including Australia. Thesenumbers should be taken with a grain of salt, becauseour information about many languages is scant or out-dated, and it is har d to draw the line between languagesand dialects. But most linguists agree that there are wellover 5,000 languages in the world.

A century from now, however, many of these languagesmay be extinct. Some linguists believ e the number maydecrease by half; some say the total could fall to merehundreds as the majority of the world's languages—most spoken by a few thousand people or less—giveway to languages like English, Spanish, P ortuguese,Mandarin Chinese, Russian, Indonesian, Arabic, Swahili,and Hindi. By some estimates, 90% of the world's languages may vanish within the next century.

Whose languages are endangered?Although the endangered languages are spoken byminority communities, these communities account formost of the world's languages. They include the tribes

What does it mean to say a language is endangered?An endangered language is one that is likely tobecome extinct in the near future. Many languages arefalling out of use and being replaced by others thatare more widely used in the region or nation, such asEnglish in the U.S. or Spanish in Mexico. Unless cur-rent trends are reversed, these endangered languageswill become extinct within the next century. Manyother languages are no longer being learned by newgenerations of children or by new adult speakers;these languages will become extinct when their lastspeaker dies. In fact, dozens of languages today haveonly one native speaker still living, and that person'sdeath will mean the extinction of the language: It willno longer be spoken, or known, by anyone.

Is that what happened to dead languages like Ancient Greek and Latin?No. These languages are considered dead becausethey are no longer spoken in the form in which we�nd them in ancient writings. But they weren'tabruptly replaced by other languages; instead,Ancient Greek slowly evolved into modern Greek, andLatin slowly evolved into modern Italian, Spanish,French, Romanian, and other languages. In the sameway, the Old English of Chaucer's day is no longerspoken, but it has evolved into Modern English.

How do languages become extinct?Outright genocide is one cause of language extinc-tion. For example, when European invaders extermi-nated the Tasmanians in the early 19th century, anunknown number of languages died as well. Far moreoften, however, languages become extinct when acommunity �nds itself under pressur e to integratewith a larger or more powerful group. Sometimes thepeople learn the outsiders' language in addition totheir own; this has happened in Greenland, a territoryof Denmark, where Kalaallisut is learned alongsideDanish. But often the community is pressured to giveup its language and even its ethnic and cultural iden-tity. This has been the case for the ethnic Kurds inTurkey, who are forbidden by law to print or formallyteach their language. It has also been the case foryounger speakers of Native American languages,

of Papua New Guinea, who alone speak as any as 900languages; Aboriginal peoples of Australia, over 90% ofwhose native languages will die with the current genera-tion; the native peoples of the Americas, who still retain900 or so of their languages; the national and tribalminorities of Africa, Asia, and Oceania, speaking severalthousand more languages; and marginalized Europeanpeoples such as the Irish, the Frisians, the Provençal,and the Basques.

How many North American native languages are endangered?According to a recent survey, out of hundreds of lan-guages that were once spoken in North America, only194 remain. Of these, 33 are spoken by both adults andchildren; another 34 are spoken by adults, but by fewchildren; 73 are spoken almost entirely by adults over50; 49 are spoken only by a few people, mostly over 70;and 5 may have already become extinct.

The languages that are not being transmitted to chil-dren, or that are being learned by few children, areendangered and likely to become extinct. In fact, onlythe 33 languages in the �rst gr oup seem 'safe.' Butmost of these are threatened as well because theirspeakers liv e near other communities where the childrenspeak English. And all nativ e North American groups areunder pressure to give up their native languages anduse English instead. The younger generation feels thepressure especially strongly; television and movies oftensend a message that discourages the maintenance ofcommunity values, inviting young viewers to join a moreglamorous and more commercialized world that has noapparent connection to their native community and itselders and traditions.

Nonetheless, although a great deal of linguistic heritageis clearly in danger, the fact that so many NativeAmerican languages have survived into the 21st centuryis evidence of the strength of these communities and ofthe fundamental value of language to human beings.

What does language extinction mean fora community—and for the rest of us?When a community loses its language, it often loses agreat deal of its cultural identity at the same time.Although language loss may be voluntary or involuntary,

it always involves pressure of some kind, and it isoften felt as a loss of social identity or as a symbol ofdefeat. That doesn't mean that a group's social iden-tity is always lost when its language is lost; for exam-ple, both the Chumash in California and the Manx onthe Isle of Man have lost their native languages, butnot their identity as Chumash or Manx. But languageis a powerful symbol of a group's identity. Much ofthe cultural, spiritual, and intellectual life of a peopleis experienced through language. This ranges fromprayers, myths, ceremonies, poetry, oratory, andtechnical vocabulary to everyday greetings, leave-takings, conversational styles, humor, ways of speak-ing to children, and terms for habits, behaviors, andemotions. When a language is lost, all of this mustbe refashioned in the new language—with di�erentwords, sounds, and grammar— if it is to be kept atall. Frequently traditions are abruptly lost in theprocess and replaced by the cultural habits of themore powerful group. For these reasons, among oth-ers, it is often very important to the community itselfthat its language survive.

Much is lost from a scienti�c point of view as wellwhen a language disappears. A people's history ispassed down through its language, so when the lan-guage disappears, it may take with it important infor-mation about the early history of the community. Theloss of human languages also sev erely limits whatlinguists can learn about human cognition. By study-ing what all of the world's languages have in com-mon, we can �nd out what is and isn't possible in ahuman language. This in turn tells us importantthings about the human mind and how it is that chil-dren are able to learn a complex system like lan-guage so quickly and easily. The fewer languagesthere are to study, the less we will be able to learnabout the human mind.

But wouldn't it be easier if everyonejust spoke the same language?Although for many people it's important to know amajor national or international language, that does-n't mean they must abandon their mother tongue.Children who grow up speaking two or more lan-guages learn those languages just as w ell as childr enwho grow up speaking only one language.

What can be done to preserve endangered languages?A community that wants to preserve or revive its language has a number of options. Perhaps the mostdramatic story is that of Modern Hebrew, which wasrevived as a mother tongue after centuries of beinglearned and studied only in its ancient written form.Irish has had considerable institutional and politicalsupport as the national language of Ireland, despitemajor inroads by English. In New Zealand, Maori com-munities established nursery schools sta�ed by eld-ers and conducted entirely in Maori, called kohangareo, 'language nests'. There, and in Alaska, Hawaii,and elsewhere, this model is being extended to primary and in some cases secondary school. And inCalifornia, younger adults have become languageapprentices to older adult speakers in communitieswhere only a few older speakers are still living. A growing number of conferences, workshops, and pub-lications now o�er support for individuals, schools, andcommunities trying to preserve languages.

Because so many languages are in danger of disap-pearing, linguists are trying to learn as much aboutthem as possible, so that even if the language disappears, all knowledge of the language won'tdisappear at the same time. Researchers makevideotapes, audiotapes, and written records of language use in both formal and informal settings,along with translations.

In addition, they analyze the vocabulary and rules ofthe language and write dictionaries and grammars.

Linguists also work with communities around theworld that want to preserve their languages, o�er-ing both technical and practical help with languageteaching, maintenance, and revival. This help isbased in part on the dictionaries and grammarsthat they write. But linguists can help in otherways, too, using their experience in teaching andstudying a wide variety of languages. They can usewhat they've learned about other endangered lan-guages to help a community preserve its own lan-guage, and they can take advantage of the latesttechnology for recording and studying languages.

Are new languages being born toreplace the languages that die?Yes. Many signed languages, including AmericanSign Language, have been born within the last fewcenturies. Tok Pisin, the national language ofPapua New Guinea, developed from an English-based pidgin (a blend of two or more languages).And over many centuries, di�erent dialects of asingle language can grow to be distinct languagesin their own right, just as dialects of Latin devel-oped into French, Italian, and so on.

But these new languages do not compare to thelinguistic heritage that is being lost. The thou-sands of languages spoken in the world todayhave evolved over the entire course of human his-tory. Every group of related languages is separatedfrom every other group by at least 5000 years ofdevelopment, usually more. If English were tobecome the sole language of every person onearth, it would take tens of thousands of years toproduce anything like the diversity that is our heritage—assuming we could somehow reproducethe conditions under which this diversity grew. Forall practical purposes, the diversity we have now isabsolutely irreplaceable.

For further informationDavis, Wade. 1999. "V anishing Cultures". NationalGeographic. 196(2). 62-89.

Grenoble, Lenore, and Lindsay Whaley (eds.) 1998.Endangered Languages: Language L oss andCommunity Response. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Robins, Robert, and Eugenius Uhlenbeck (eds.)1992. Endangered Languages.

Oxford: Berg.

http://www.linguistlist.com