First, they were driven apart, scattered in trailers across campus after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake destroyed the Language Corner. Then, five years later, the foreign languages and literatures departments were brought together administratively--despite faculty objections--under an umbrella "division" that coordinated undergraduate courses and graduate admissions. Finally, in 1996, the departments were reunited physically in seismically strengthened Pigott Hall.
Now, deans in the School of Humanities and Sciences have proposed merging Asian languages, comparative literature, French and Italian, German studies, Slavic languages and literatures, and Spanish and Portuguese into one department. The consolidated department would have a single chair and directors for each of six "area groups." Many faculty perceive this proposal as the last step in a long-term University plan to downsize their fields of study, and 743 students and staff have signed a petition asking for more input and a lengthier discussion of the topic.
Both sides say they're concerned about the shrinking number of faculty members. "We have six relatively small departments that are vulnerable to changes and vacancies," says Keith Baker, cognizant dean for the humanities. "A large department will have more weight in making claims to the University for resources." Baker says he has a "firm guarantee" from outgoing H&S Dean Malcolm Beasley that assistant professors who leave or are denied tenure will be replaced and that the consolidated department will hire five new senior faculty.
Many faculty, however, argue that five new positions departmentwide won't compensate for escalating losses. For example, French and Italian chair Jeffrey Schnapp says that his department has lost one-third of its faculty to retirements and tenure denials over the past 15 years--"and the University has refused to allow us to replace them." The Slavic department has become perilously small, with only four tenured faculty. And the merger proposal contains no guarantee that departing professors will be replaced within the same area group.
In addition, says Asian languages chair Chao Fen Sun, it doesn't make sense "to lump Asian languages with European departments." Sun has proposed a task force to consider establishing an autonomous department of East Asian languages and cultures.
Schnapp has also submitted an alternative proposal: to create a division of international studies. Some faculty, however, say such reasoning supports a merger of the existing departments. "People don't just read French or Italian or American literature--they read more broadly," says comparative literature professor Sepp Gumbrecht. A consolidated department "would reflect that truth."
Baker and associate dean John Bender say the merger proposal emerged from last year's external review of the division. In it, Catharine Stimpson, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Science at New York University, and Sander Gilman, professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago, recommended four ways to strengthen the division.
"But their report explicitly argues that departmentalization is the weakest alternative," says Schnapp, PhD '82. He and others contend that a consolidated department is characteristic of schools that do not have exemplary graduate programs. "Not a single peer institution--not Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia or Chicago--has anything remotely resembling a department of modern languages," Schnapp says. If the merger is approved, he adds, "Stanford will find itself in the company of Allegheny State College and Pepperdine."
Stimpson and Gilman note in their report that "graduate students, going out into the academic job market, might find a doctorate from a department of languages, cultures and literatures lacking in specificity. As a result, potential employers, e.g., a German department, might not immediately know what a Stanford degree represented."
Many professors and students believe the administration is acting without their input. "We need to democratize the process," says Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano, chair of Spanish and Portuguese. And German studies chair Rob Robinson, '68, who says he's "interested [in] and not opposed" to the merger, says "absolutely" there is "a top-down element" to the decision making. The 743 petitioners have asked the Faculty Senate to discuss the proposed merger.
The H&S deans have contended in the past that the Faculty Senate does not need to consider the issue, since no degree requirements are changing. They have forwarded their proposal to Provost John Etchemendy, who in 1994 chaired the Language Task Force that recommended the division structure. Etchemendy, PhD '82, discussed the merger with his Advisory Board on March 14 and, at press time, was expected to make a recommendation to University President John Hennessy. Hennessy, in turn, would pass along his recommendation to the Board of Trustees in June.
