Letter to the Editor: The Loss of the Arabic Language Program

This spring marks the first semester at Amherst College in decades where the Arabic language has not been taught. In 2011, the college started to offer its consistent Arabic courses that successfully lasted for 15 years. The college’s decision to abruptly end the Arabic program, followed only days later by the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s termination of their own Four-Skilled Arabic language program, has left Smith College, as well as a less intensive Arabic track at UMass, the only remaining options for Five College students to learn the fifth-most spoken language in the world. Despite opposition from students and a letter signed by 65 members of the faculty condemning the cuts, the administration has so far held to their decision. This is, in no uncertain terms, a betrayal of the philosophy of a liberal arts education which Amherst purports to provide.

The news of Amherst’s decision came after the termination of the Five College Arabic Language Initiative, which coordinated the study of Arabic across the Five Colleges along with the offerings from each campus department. The end of this initiative did not, however, inherently have to mean the end of Arabic instruction at Amherst College. As noted previously, Smith College has continued to offer four years of Arabic instruction and a minor in Arabic, and UMass continues to offer a Judaic and Near Eastern Studies track in Arabic after terminating the Four-Skilled program. In contrast, Amherst College not only terminated the Arabic program, but did so in the middle of the year, without allowing the current class of students to complete the year’s instruction. This is a decision that forces students who wish to continue to switch instructors mid-year and make the 45-minute (at best) bus ride to Smith, a barrier that will no doubt prove prohibitive to most or all students with an interest in beginning to learn the Arabic language. In fact, it already has: This fall, seven students were enrolled in First-Year Arabic I. With the cancellation of the program, none of them have continued their studies.

One of the primary rationales provided by the college for the discontinuation of the Arabic language program has been low enrollment and the apparent “lack of success in the program” that those enrollment numbers represent. To begin with, citing “low enrollment” as a reason for shuttering the entire Arabic language program is a difficult reasoning to accept from a college which touts “small classes” as one of the key benefits of an Amherst education. Nearly any student at this college can fondly recall a time that they took a small course — maybe with as few as three, four, or five students — and benefited from the deep discussions and personalized education that only that environment can provide. For me, many of those memories are from my time in Arabic classrooms at this college. I find it especially absurd to claim a language course is failing when class sizes are small. The small group discussions, community, and one-on-one instruction from the professor that a small language class offered were part of what made the Arabic classes at this college special and enabled intensive language learning that a 20-plus person class could not have replicated.

Furthermore, the Arabic program was hardly unique among language programs in its level of enrollment. For example, as Provost Martha Umphrey noted when describing the reasoning for the cuts, Russian language courses at Amherst have also seen low enrollment. This is despite the fact that Russian is backed by an entire department, with Russian literature, culture, and history courses offered every semester to introduce students to the language and bolster enrollment (as it should be — every language deserves this level of support). Arabic, in contrast, was nestled within the Asian Languages and Civilizations Department alongside two other languages, had only two professors, and has comparable literature and history courses inconsistently offered and scattered across other departments. As recently as 2021, it wasn’t even possible for an Amherst College student to complete four years of Arabic instruction without taking classes at the other Five Colleges, as all four years of the language could not be offered simultaneously during one semester due to resource and professor limitations.

Given these factors, it’s frankly remarkable that Arabic classes had the enrollment they did, despite a serious lack of institutional support for the program. It speaks to the interest of the student body in this language and to the skill and dedication of the instructors. Without language assistants or the full backing of a department, the incredibly dedicated professors of Arabic at this college have been instructors, tutoring program coordinators, event schedulers, mentors, and more. These are the professors whose positions the college has unceremoniously cut, under the pretense that their roles have no further value to this college. As I and many of their other students can testify, that could not be farther from the truth.

Why, then, has the college decided to withdraw support from the Arabic program? Provost Umphrey is quoted in The Student’s article from last fall, saying the choice to end the Arabic language program was not “a political decision.” It concerns me that a professor at Amherst College believes such a decision could be anything but political.

How many students major in European Studies every year? How about in German or Russian? In my own class, the Class of 2025, there were a grand total of two European Studies majors, four German majors and one Russian major — all of whom had at least one other major. Again, this is not to argue against those programs; the value of teaching a language or a culture is not measured in the number of students who make it their major. The point in bringing up these numbers is to lay bare the double standard being applied in this decision, in which “low enrollment” and “retention rates” are selectively deployed as excuses to cut one program but not others.

According to the administration, we must also consider the level of departmental support when comparing the divergent fates of these low-enrollment programs. Perhaps the administration should consider why Arabic is lacking in departmental support. While European languages like French, German, Russian, and Spanish (although they are of course spoken globally) each receive their own department, the entire continent of Asia is represented by one. That disparity originates in the racist, imperialist belief that European cultures are superior to all others, that they are the only ones worthy of intensive study while the rest of the world can be lumped into broad regional categories. The decision to cut the Arabic program is not a single political act — it is built on layers of political acts, spanning decades and reaching far beyond Amherst. When Provost Umphrey said Arabic was cut because of a lack of departmental support, what that means is that Arabic was cut because this college still believes that the Arabic-speaking world does not have history, culture, and language worth studying. Are those the values of our community?

For those who have no personal relationship to the Arabic language or the program at Amherst, I would implore you not to remain silent now. This college is irreparably damaged when the administration decides to abandon a part of our community, to withdraw support to a program that has meant so much to so many people, and to send the message that Arabic speakers are not valued here and that this language is not worth teaching. Furthermore, the precedent this sets should alarm anybody who has benefited from the “low enrollment” programs that make Amherst College what it is. What the administration demonstrates by ending Arabic instruction at Amherst is that any small program, no matter its importance to the community or in the world at large, can be cut the moment it is inconvenient for them to support.

I don’t have the space or the words to fully convey the loss that this decision represents for the Amherst community. In particular, I can’t speak to what this means for the community of native and heritage Arabic speakers. Instead, I want to direct you to this document, which contains testimonials on the importance of this program and what the discontinuation means for the Amherst community.

The damage of this decision for the future of Arabic learning at the college has already begun to be felt — the base of first-year students who began this fall, who could have progressed into the higher-level courses, have had their education interrupted and may find it hard to return even if the program is restored. However, it is still not too late for the administration to reverse course. I would hope that the continued opposition to these cuts demonstrates how profoundly valuable the Arabic program has been to the community, and as an alumnus, I know that I feel little motivation to engage with a college that is unwilling to stand up for the value of an education. Regardless of how the college chooses to move forward, these past 15 years of Arabic education at Amherst College have made a deep impact, one that I and many others will continue to carry with us. I can only hope that future students will have the same opportunity.