September 22, 2000

American Scholars' Intellectual Isolation

To the Editor:

I can corroborate Richard Shusterman's experience as an American philosopher abroad with my own in another, related discipline ("The Perils of Making Philosophy a Lingua Americana," Opinion, August 11). The German government gave me a grant to fund my Ph.D. research into jazz in Europe. ... I found surprise and gratitude that an American ethnomusicologist had learned German well enough to read untranslated books and articles on both American jazz history (from a very