next »

[merce]

Sorry to those who don't read Spanish.

The article says that a professor of Spanish at the University of Pittsburgh has filed a complaint claiming she was fired after over a dozen years teaching Spanish because of her accent.  She has a peninsular or Spain-Spanish accent while her colleagues are mostly Latin Americans or Latin Americanists who pronounce Spanish differently.

NB: The "accent" consists of "lisping" the Z and Cs instead of using an S sound for those two letters. Also, there is a more throaty sound in Peninsular Spanish. Nothing more elaborate than that. Think Texas English vs. New Yorker English with a lisp rather than even something as strong as British vs. American.

She says the environment was uncomfortable for her with a Bolivian colleague going so far as to say Spain was the country of the oppressors.  This, she claims, led her to feel less motivated to contribute fully to the department.

I don't buy it myself.  She is clutching at straws. We'll see if this gets anymore reports in the news to follow.

I've definitely had people say dumb things to me about my accent :

-Oh, it's unfortunately you are a Latin American who does Peninsular; we really need someone from Spain with the Spanish accent on this campus for our students. We have too much Latin American Spanish on this campus already.


to the other side of the pendulum's swing:

-The future is with Latin American Spanish and the Latin American world. We really can't justify Spanish [sic] professors in our department with the US the way it is today with so many Hispanics [sic] here.


As my dad used to say, I can't win for losin'.

[zharkov]

I don't read Spanish, but I infer that the faculty member was not tenured (or tenure track).

If that is the case, I believe more or less anything someone says about shenanigans in higher ed.

[antiphon1]

Um, baloney.

Perhaps the dialect police run the department at that place, but something else is likely going on.  For goodness sakes, one of my colleagues has mispronounced the word "hundred" as "hunert" for, well, longer than I've been here.  His regional pronunciation fairly screams uneducated lout.  His publication record, however, tells a completely different story.  I'm fairly skeptical as to whether dialect alone would prevent tenure. 

[seniorscholar]

I once sat on a secret Dean's level committee to investigate charges by one member of the Italian department against another: it involved the animus of "A," the born-and-educated-in-Italy (and relatively upper class but lacking a PhD) associate professor towards "B," the up-for-tenure child of immigrants to the US who had a PhD from Columbia University but "spoke like a peasant."  After listening to all the testimony (and departmental factional shenanigans) we advised the Dean to disregard this dispute -- and the department vote, whatever it turned out to be -- and follow the recommendation of the college tenure committee which was, eventually, in favor of tenure. And I do know that disagreements about Peninsular vs. Latin American speech have arisen in the Spanish department.

Never discount the potential for strife and jealousy in low-paid departments that do not emphasize research and so have to find other things to build a pecking order.

[octoprof]

NB: The "accent" consists of "lisping" the Z and Cs instead of using an S sound for those two letters. Also, there is a more throaty sound in Peninsular Spanish. Nothing more elaborate than that. Think Texas English vs. New Yorker English with a lisp rather than even something as strong as British vs. American.

So she isn't allowed to teach Spanish because she sounds like someone from... Spain?

Egad.

I've been to Spain. I've heard that accent. I think it's lovely. Oh, for the days in Matalascanas, Huelva and Punta Umbria.

[janewales]

Canadian French departments sometimes have a divide between the France-French people and the Quebec-French people, and sometimes that divide has political overtones.

[history_anon]

There's a lot more here than is explained in the article.  Judging by her name, the fired instructor is probably not a native speaker, so that may be an issue as to the quality of her spoken Spanish as well.  It's also weird that she was apparently an adjunct or contingent employee (14 years at Pitt without earning tenure), but served on multiple search committees.  What's up with that?  While I don't doubt that she may have been treated unfairly, the article doesn't give the department chair's side of the story, and I'd want more information before taking one side or the other.

[melba_frilkins]

Here's more or less the same article in English.

While googling for this, I found out by accident that on the UP Hispanic languages website, the page for "Sarah Williams" is populated by a photo & bio of Frans Weiser.  Note to universities: when one of your instructors makes the news, double check your website for weirdness.

[merce]

... Judging by her name, the fired instructor is probably not a native speaker, so that may be an issue as to the quality of her spoken Spanish as well.  ...

That's bloody ignorant if you don't mind my saying so.
And Stoopid.

[mouseman]

What is it with Spanish departments in the Ivies?  Just this spring there was that poor guy from Princeton who committed suicide after he was summarily fired.

[fiona]

What is it with Spanish departments in the Ivies?  Just this spring there was that poor guy from Princeton who committed suicide after he was summarily fired.

Friendly correction: Pitt, the University of Pittsburgh, is not an Ivy. It's a state-related school, one of the state universities of Pennsylvania, like Penn State or Temple.

The University of Pennsylvania is a private school and in the Ivy League.

Otherwise, what is it with Spanish departments? might be a good question, if many of them have a history of strife. I don't know if they do.

The Fiona, who sings in Spanish badly but does not speak it except when seeking good food in Mexico

[macaroon]

... Judging by her name, the fired instructor is probably not a native speaker, so that may be an issue as to the quality of her spoken Spanish as well.  ...

That's bloody ignorant if you don't mind my saying so.
And Stoopid.

Well, it is... but...

Maybe there is an academic reason for not renewing her contract?  She must not be tenured or tenure track.  When one is tenured or tenure track, there is a responsibility to develop and maintain the curriculum.  I know how it is - many of our adjuncts these days are more than capable of taking on that responsibility.  But some aren't.   Maybe she isn't skilled enough to follow along in the direction that the chair wishes to take the department?

[farm_boy]

Among the various divisions of the nuthouse which is higher ed, Spanish departments are most likely the nuttiest.

I got my PhD at a large public research U where there were no faculty meetings because they were incapable of sitting in the same room without fighting over their rival theories of Lit Crit.

However, there must be more to the story at Pitt.  It's no big surprise that Spain was the land of the oppressors; anyone from Spain with a brain acknowledges that.

(By the way, the rain in Spain does NOT fall mainly on the plains, but rather in the mountains)

[tinyzombie]

... Judging by her name, the fired instructor is probably not a native speaker, so that may be an issue as to the quality of her spoken Spanish as well.  ...

That's bloody ignorant if you don't mind my saying so.
And Stoopid.

+1

[concordancia]

Across the country, probably about half of Spanish MAs and PhDs do not have hispanic names. In other European languages, the percentages are even higher. Furthermore, as this adjunct was employed for 12 years, I doubt that her fluency was an issue, unless there has been a recent change in administration. Since Pitt has pretty good language program, I doubt it was an issue at all. For some reason, programs that are indifferent to faculty fluency seem to be mainly in the South.

I suspect that this adjunct did not want to get with some new programatic change and so was let go. It is, indeed, possible that this involved something like not teaching the vosotros form of verbs, but I suspect that it was more like a refusal to use a common syllabus or accept that T/TT faculty get priority in teaching assignments or otherwise administrative. Perhaps the adjunct was refusing to use a newly adopted book, with the argument that the new book did not cover the vosotros.