The Australian Society for French Studies condemns the announcement from the University of Cardiff to disestablish its entire School of Modern Languages, including not only French but Chinese, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish. Without Languages, Cardiff students will be at a disadvantage in our globalised, multilingual world, and the careers of world-class researchers will be jeopardised. We call on the University to reverse this shortsighted decision immediately.
The loss of Languages at the University of Cardiff would deeply damage the University’s reputation in the UK and globally, and has already led to outrage in the international academic community. Yet the ramifications of this decision would not only injure the University and its staff and students, but the country. Although Wales is proudly bilingual, it would become the only country in the United Kingdom whose capital university is linguistically Anglocentric, and whose sole Russell Group university provides no international multilingual research or teaching capacity. The closure of the School of Modern Languages would therefore threaten Cardiff students’ professional and intellectual success and create a knowledge and skills gap in the region that extends beyond Cardiff to Wales at large.
We call on all colleagues, students and friends of languages to mobilise against this illogical and devastating plan. We stand with our Cardiff colleagues at this difficult time and urge you to do the following:
- Sign this petition and share it widely with your networks
- Write on the Save Cardiff Languages website wall of support
- Write directly to the Vice-Chancellor Professor Larner, (LarnerW@cardiff.ac.uk) and Deputy Vice Chancellor Professor Walford Davies (WalfordDaviesD@cardiff.ac.uk) to express your opposition to these cuts.
Most importantly, we call on Cardiff University to acknowledge the importance of Languages and to abandon its plan.
Sincerely,
The Australian Society for French Studies
