The man who taught my first-year Latin course in college was a renegade from the French department. His specialty was medieval French literature, but he taught Latin to get away from his department, and his colleagues. The latter were not very fond of him since the time he was chair of the department and had advised students not to major in French. His reasoning was that, unless one intended to teach French, there was no need to major in it. You can take all the French you want, learn the language well, but major in something else to which you can then apply your knowledge of French.
This kind of reasoning led me, in college and graduate school and beyond, to study four modern and four ancient languages without even considering majoring in any of them. Rather, I have applied them well in my chosen career of librarian and historian. They have been very useful to me, and I would like to learn even more when I find the time.
I was reminded of this when I read the March 18 opinion piece by William A. Viall III in the Providence Journal. Mr. Viall says that Brown University "dismisses three great cultures" in its decision to close the graduate programs in Slavic, German, and Italian languages. His essay contains much misinformation: for instance, that these programs will be folded into one "meta program," and that the move was "undoubtedly initiated by [recently departed President E. Gordon] Gee." In fact, the decision to close the German graduate program (for one) was in the making long before Gee ever came to Brown. The "meta-program" is widely rumored, but I don't think any such decision has been made.
What troubles me more than the misinformation, however, is Mr. Viall's reasoning, and the assumption that closing these graduate programs is "dismissing" the associated cultures. Mr. Viall emphasizes the Slavic, contrasting the closing of the graduate program in Slavic languages with the growth of the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown. "The Watson Institute needs a strong Russian-language department to flourish," he writes. "There is nothing sadder than a Russian scholar who doesn't know the Russian language, or have a foundation in Russian culture."
But Brown is not closing the Slavic language department, only the graduate program. How many historians, political scientists, economists, and sociologists specializing in Russia have done their graduate work in a department of Slavic languages? Most of them, like me, have taken the language (and perhaps literature) courses from that department while pursuing their chosen field of study elsewhere. They may have done so as graduate students, but they did not necessarily take graduate courses. The fact is that many more students take Russian, or German, or Italian in their college years than ever go on to graduate study.
Mr. Viall also assumes (as do many academics) that a department without a graduate program cannot be a good department. It will not be able to hire a good faculty. Even the better professors now at Brown "will have left for real Russian graduate departments." This is a common conceit among some academics - that no scholar worth his (usually his) salt would teach only undergraduates. A professor once told me he was trying to raise the funds for an endowed chair in some specialty we had never before offered. "That's good," said I. "The library should be able to support such a chair, as long as the person teaches only undergraduate courses."
"You can't bring someone into a named chair," he responded, "and not let him have graduate students!"
Why not? They do so at Wellesley, at Amherst, Haverford, and Oberlin. But, I suppose these places dismiss all cultures, for they have no graduate programs. And no good scholar would deign to teach at such a place!
Since I came to Brown some seven years ago, I have regularly attended meetings of the Graduate Council, which reviews all the graduate programs. I have been genuinely impressed by the quality of the programs, of the faculty, and of the students. Brown has many small programs, and is remarkably successful at placing its graduates in the academic job market. But I have also been struck by how small some of these programs are, and how much they cost to maintain. Some have produced only one or two Ph.D's in 10 years! Brown has decided that it wants to strengthen its graduate programs. But it can only do so by making some hard choices - some will be strengthened, and some will die.
I have never formally studied Italian, but some research recently took me to Italy (where I paid a visit to Brown's excellent Italian program in Bologna), and I found it useful to teach myself a little. Because I know French and Latin pretty well, it was not difficult for me to attain some modest ability. I need to go back, however, and I'm seriously considering taking a course. I can do so without a graduate program in Italian. Anyone else at Brown can do the same. Closing a graduate program is not the same as "dismissing" a culture.