hardboiled

API education and language NOW

With the present state of the economy, everyone seems to be feeling the crunch. Personally, I had been fortunate enough to not be directly effected by this crisis until recently.

I was exploring my options for a second major or a minor, when I heard that the Korean language minor was in danger of being cut altogether. Whether this is factual or not, it is definitely true that the East Asian Language and Cultures Department and the South and Southeast Asian Language Department are facing major cuts once again. As predicted, last year’s efforts by students to fight the huge slashes to the EALC and SSELC budget managed to delay the cuts for a year, but another plan to make substantial cuts to these departments are already underway. Though cuts are happening all across the board, certain API language and education courses are facing a disproportionately severe cut in their funds.

Korean is the only East Asian Language Course at Berkeley that does not offer a major. With one professor (not tenured) the Korean program in Berkeley lacks the resources to build a full major, and the courses offered now have little security in the light of the budget cuts at hand.

In the South and Southeast Asian Language Department, languages not protected by endowments and tenure-track professors, will also have trouble maintaining the already insufficient number of language courses offered.

I sat down with Christine Hong, a post-doctoral fellow and a leader of Asian Pacific Islander Education and Languages Now! to hear her perspective on the budget cuts taking place in the EALC and SSEAS department. What I walked away with was a greater understanding that these budget cuts are about so much more than a lack of funds.

From my discussion with Hong, from my attendance at the forum held by APIEL Now!, from talking to my friends with Asian language majors, it is evident that untenured professors, fewer courses offered, and lack of funding are not separate problems in themselves, but the manifestation of a bigger problem – the attitude internalized by the UC Berkeley administration towards API language and education. The demographics of the Berkeley campus have shifted dramatically in the last 50 years, but the legacy of a Euro-centric mindset still remains.

On a campus that is 45% ethnically Asian, API language and education courses do not merely serve the purpose of teaching a skill, but facilitates the development of people’s identities. Heritage students and non-heritage students alike are able to learn about different cultures and societies through language education.

Still, API language classes at Berkeley are often considered as “service courses” by the administration, meaning that learning another language is seen as a supplement, or an extra skill to develop alongside a more “scholarly” subject. Language programs that are well-established and have a long history at Cal are typically given priority in times of budget cuts, and newer programs are the first to go. This trend appears fairly unbiased at first-glance, but times have changed in the last century, and the world of academia has progressed and become more diverse. This tendency to keep the old and cut the new directly contradicts the progressive spirit that UC Berkeley so proudly claims to embody.

“It’s basically a Euro-centric curriculum that gets preserved first, “ commented Hong, “and then all of these other sorts of fields which have been historically neglected and often times only arose or emerged within this institution because of grass-roots struggles – those get slashed.”

While the Scandinavian program has more professors than students majoring in Scandinavian, the turn away rate for enrollment in many API languages is more than substantial.

For the administration to automatically cling to what has already been established without considering the present state of the campus and the needs of the student population at hand is short-sighted. For the administration to be unresponsive to the high demands for API language and education Courses at Cal is irresponsible. And for the administration to offer temporary relief instead of recognizing its need to progress with the rest of the campus is just plain inadequate.