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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (March 8, 2004)
Commentary Arabic language program deserves more consideration Despite the obvious benefits of knowing and understanding Arabic, universities across the United States have not GUEST enough to address the knowledge gap in our country when it comes to Arabic and the Is lamic World. Arabic is the liturgical language of one billion Muslims worldwide, and 300 million others speak a dialect of Arabic in their daily lives. In 1968 the number of students who registered for Arabic classes in the United States represented only 0.1 percent of all students who registered for one of the 14 most commonly taught foreign languages. Thirty years later, it had only grown to 0.5 percent (http://www.adfl.org). Here in Eugene, there have been wonderful first steps, such as the much publicized hiring of Dr. Timothy Gian otti in the Religious Studies program. There are also rumors about the cre ation of a minor in Middle Eastern Studies. However, there has been very little dialogue about starting an Arabic language program. Why? Portland State University has had an Arabic program for decades. Oregon COMMENTARY State apparently started a program last year. Having a legitimate Arabic pro gram here would boost the school's notoriety by placing it into a small group of schools nationwide that offer Arabic. This would also impact the number of students who want to at tend school here. In the class schedule for this term you can find Danish (eight students), Finnish (two students), Greek (17 stu dents), Norwegian (14 students) and Swedish (seven students). Is Arabic not as important as these languages? Each term, my students ask why Ara bic has not become a more promi nent language program here. Why not start a program and have the credits count toward a Bachelor's of Arts lan guage requirement? Despite its rela tive obscurity, the number of students who take the Pass/No Pass self-study course each term has hovered around 20 for the last couple of years. The de mand is there, so where's the supply? If funding is the main issue, can an Arabic class, with sufficient enroll ments, not be able to sustain itself? Given the obvious demand for a course that carries no applicable cred its and satisfies no requirements, it's logical to predict significantly larger demand if these ad hoc courses were a part of a regular language program. We are in the midst of a geopoliti cal reality where understanding Ara bic, or not, has serious impacts on what we are doing. For example, in surgents in Iraq will occasionally write warnings on the roads where they've planted bombs to blow our soldiers up. Unfortunately, they don't write it in English and our troops diligently drive past and encounter a burst of shrapnel traveling around 700 mph. What's worse is that many of the peo ple writing the policies that place peo ple in these scenarios are also igno rant of the languages and cultures of the areas they're meddling with. This has led to a whole variety of things blowing up in our faces. We need to take a more serious look at establishing a program that will produce people who are aware of what the Middle East is like and who can effectively communicate with the people there who are receiving as skewed a version of our culture as we do of theirs. We need to follow in Frost's footsteps, taking the road less traveled by, and that will make all the difference. Alaysa Kathalik? Chris Holman, a senior majoring in geography and international studies, teaches Arabic in the Self-Study Language program. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Letter is a personal attack devoid of clear argument It astounds me what drivel people will try to pass off as public discourse. The vitriolic letter's ("Protest that which really kills," ODE, Feb. 11) most profound element was its ability to raise more problems in 250 words than I can list. The letter was riddled with fallacies. She simply made fun of Jacqueline (ad hominem), which points only to her lack of creativity, ci vility and intellectual prowess, or per haps her promising future as a school yard bully. On abortion, she said Jacqueline should defend people who are actual ly alive (which begs the question). There were multiple unwarranted log ical jumps — Jacqueline must have prayed for them, that must be hypo critical, people who light candles for fetuses haven't made tough choices (including abortions), abstinence programs are lunacy (mere name-call ing). Furthermore, her intolerant words show no room for diversity, nor any grasp of the ambiguities in herent in such controversial issues. How are these platitudes any differ ent than Texas fundamentalism? Also, she ironically fails to realize that em bodying such a violent interpersonal stance is clearly hypocritical — her ap proach is frequently at the root of op pression and war. To mock a person's deeply held re ligious conviction is asinine, to pro vide no argument is ignorant and to make fun of a person's intolerance in a way that is, ironically, so deeply hateful lands somewhere between nauseating, entertaining and embar rassing. As an academic and a consci entious objector I am embarrassed to be associated with such unproductive and mean-spirited words. Consider engaging ideas, not undeverly bash ing people. Ron Davis educational leadership Affirmative action aids universities in diversity-building Travis Willses recent column ("Crossing the racial line," ODE, Feb. 20) adds yet another boring critique to a unoriginal drone of commentary on affirmative action. The compari son Willse draws to University of Michigan's "extinct" affirmative action admission policies makes no sense. Perhaps a re-reading of Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger (which, rather than merely allowing "certain biases toward some minority students," allow race to be a impor tant plus in admissions decisions) would be in order. It seems that affir mative action is alive and well in uni versity admissions. While Willse says diversity-build ing scholarships "can't fairly make the same claim" as admissions poli cies geared toward increasing diver sity, it seems as though these schol arships serve that exact same function. The Michigan cases in no way made diversity-building schol arships unconstitutional. Willse also says these scholarships "deny opportunities to people ... based on characteristics unrelated to those opportunities." Perhaps he should actually take a look at some of the criteria for many other schol arships. 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