Manifesto again

I often grouse around with colleagues that students have no knowledge of the Cold War, and that we need to teach courses specifically on the period 1945-1989. They have no sense of the polarization of everything and what it was like to think that the entire world could really be completely destroyed anytime, as in now or tomorrow, --not by climactic change, but by an instantaneous white flash of overwhelming heat that melted your body along with everyone else you knew.

Of course there’s a fascinating turn to forgetfulness, --after ten years of students professing no interest in Marx and Engels, I had the first lively discussion in class of the Communist Manifesto. All the comments were about contemporary economics, lots of references to globalization, a few students were clearly completely conversant in the lingo. This was quite a shift from the sullen refusal to consider the existence of class conflict that predominated a few years ago. Now the Manifesto seems to speak on its own about globalization’s inequalities.

I teach the pamphlet in the context of nineteenth-century industrialization and the 1848 revolution, all very historical, all very ancient. So it is quite the delight when the dead rise from the text –yet another day for the Gespenst.

Guido Colbert

What great satirical potential--If only it mattered. Stephen Colbert could do a hamishly convincing imitation of Guido Westerwelle. Not that the German foreign minister really needs a comedian to bring out the humor in his speech and mannerism. He does so all by himself. Still the resemblance suggests a missed potential.

Language Extinction

We are at the point where if a language is eliminated from a given university, we cannot expect to see it return in our lifetime. If Classics is eliminated, then there is hardly any foreseeable future in which it will return. So much of the Liberal Arts entails the preservation of a heritage.

While we are all obliged to be modern, there is a vast range of experience that will simply be lost, if no one teaches it. This applies to Inuit languages as much well as ancient European ones.

Once it is no longer taught, it will be forgotten, at least in the here and now—at this university, for these students in this state of the union.

I have sat on fellowship committees where we read applications from remarkable American students at Berkeley or Harvard working on Hittite or Sumerian, asking to attend a German university because the last professor in North America who taught the language had retired, and now there was just this one in Heidelberg or Tübingen who still taught seminars in the subject. Such applications get everyone’s attention, for no matter whether we taught post-war film, the Holocaust or Romanticism, we all recognized the claim these students of ancient languages had on us.

And when kids in Nevada can study only Spanish as the one other foreign language, their perception of the world and its history will have shrunk down to nothing more than their immediate surroundings.

Saving German instruction

The valiant Horst Lange is gathering support for the German, French and Italian at University of Nevada, Reno which is threatened with closure. To anyone who has read his research or heard him give a lecture, knows how excellent Horst’s work is. All three of these European language are scheduled for elimination at the University of Nevada, Reno. Take a look at the link below to sign a petition in support of preserving the language department. The administrators in charge are allowing a period for appeal, so it would really help if you signed up.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/rescue-the-german-department