Save Cal's East Asian Languages & Cultures Program

Dear Chancellor Birgeneau, Executive Dean Breslauer, and Dean Broughton:





We, the undersigned, protest the unfair cuts made to UC Berkeley's East Asian Languages and Cultures (EALC) Department, where it is predicted that 66\% of the Korean classes, 54\% of the Chinese classes, and 40\% of the Japanese classes on campus will be eliminated as of Fall 2008. Not only will the number of courses offered by EALC be drastically reduced, but also, the Korean program faces outright extinction. We demand that the Korean program, which at present sustains just a minor, be preserved. Berkeley is the flagship campus in the UC system and the UC system is the major university in the Pacific Rim. Our curriculum, which trails behind both UCLA and Stanford in EALC development, must reflect Berkeley's unique status.





These cuts, of course, impact EALC, but they will have a devastating effect on us, the Berkeley student population (over 40\% of which is of Asian descent), and on the ability of the university to fulfill its fundamental educational mission to the campus community. Undergraduate and graduate students in departments outside the College of Letters and Sciences will not be able to pursue Korean, Chinese, or Japanese language study. Students in related fields of economics, political science, history, amongst others, will be unable to fulfill their educational aspirations and their departmental requirements. If these budget cuts continue, the ability of anyone to learn these global and heritage languages will be imperiled.





In a recent interview published in the April 23rd issue of The Berkeleyan, Nathan Brostrom, Berkeley Vice Chancellor for Administration, states: вI donвt think itвs strategic at all to do wholesale or arbitrary layoffs, because that can do a lot more harm to the campus than what we could gain in budget savings.в Yet with firings impending for instructors in Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and other languages, this type of harm is exactly what is slated to happen.





East Asian languages are among the most in-demand languages on the Berkeley campus; as heritage languages to a huge percentage of the student population, they are a vital resource and part of the multiethnic fabric of Berkeley, the United States, and the Pacific Rim. As languages that give us, as global citizens, access to and presence within one of the most dynamic and growing regions in the world, Korean, Chinese, and Japanese must be saved.





NO BUDGET CUTS IN EAST ASIAN LANGUAGES AND CULTURES!