Wie Gehts, USC?

A week ago (11 April), The Chronicle featured a story on the decision of the dean of the University of Southern California to close its German department. At one level, this was not surprising, since enrollments in European language and literature departments have been declining for some time. But at another level it is quite remarkable, since many of these departments have been reinventing themselves as cultural-studies programs, and in so doing have attracted considerable student interest. Nowhere has this been more true than in the field of German, where the traditional Germanistik (language and literature) approach has been abandoned for German studies of one sort or another. In my own university, for instance, the German department offers brilliant instruction in media studies that has engaged some of our best undergraduates. I am on the other coast, and I know little first-hand about USC, but there is something about the way that its German department was terminated that makes me uncomfortable. I note that Dean Howard Gillman (a scholar in my own field whose work I admire greatly) has spun the decision as one to close a “stand-alone” German department. In his 15 April memo to the faculty, he speaks of the need for a “global perspective,” and asks whether “we best serve this commitment by organizing every great literary and cultural tradition into separate stand-alone academic departments?” He mentions the department of East Asian Languages and Cultures as a model, and dismisses German as a stand-alone department “created before USC fully embraced its mission as a truly global university.” His conclusion is that it would be better to “integrate the field of study into a broader enterprise.” Perhaps. And perhaps Dean Gillman has a clearer understanding of what it means to be academically “global” than I do. But his decision reminds me of the devastatingly successful attacks of the globalist-internationalists on the conception of area studies in the 1990s. Using the excuse that external funding was not available (true enough, I suppose), universities began to pull back on training students in area studies and even on hiring faculty. When was the last time your Economics department hired a Japanese or Middle Eastern specialist? Henry Rosovsky would have a hard time if he were seeking a first job in 2008. But everything that happens globally happens somewhere — and in a particular language. It is quite possible, as I have heard, that the USC department was not up to the highest standard. If so, that is a genuine problem for any dean, and he is right to seek a solution. But the death penalty should not be the only option — even though I realize that “partial-life abortion” seems to be the solution offered at USC. Non-consultation (again, as reported) does not seem the best way to manage a university. But, to be fair, there is another more general problem embedded in this one. How many of our academic departments have adequate strategies for managing their life course? How many plan adequately for both retirements and changes in the direction of their fields? How many tools do deans have to help departments to help themselves? There is a lot to ponder in what has happened at USC.