TO THE EDITOR:
""The limits of my language stand for the limits of my world."" Ludwig Wittgenstein's statement might as well have been an apt response to the University's latest decision to eliminate the master's and Ph.D. programs of the Department of Romance Languages as a result of state budget cuts.
This pronouncement will only draw North Carolina's borders narrower and hurt its reputation of being a world-open and diverse place of higher education.
Ever since the University first opened its doors" students have benefited from its foreign language curriculum. The founders of the first state university understood the importance for the student body to understand and express themselves in the many voices of an increasingly international world.
More than 200 years later it has become ever more important to communicate with the world's cultures and to be sensitive to diverse socioeconomic political and artistic perspectives.
Today UNC's foreign language programs and their graduate teaching assistants play a crucial role imparting intercultural perspectives to students.
Those who study or teach French Italian German or Russian leave the classroom with more than vocabulary proficiency and credit fulfillments but also with other highly marketable real-life skills: the ability to think critically be a team player and manage their time.
The message the University sends to employers and abroad is as small-minded as our perspective on a global world will be.
Nick Ostrau
Doctoral candidate
Germanic Languages
Printing news. Raising hell. Since 1893.
Tuesday, May 7, 2024
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