Whitman took a concrete step toward fostering diversity this semester by adding Arabic to its foreign language offerings.

This is the first time Arabic has been in the course catalog. The class filled up quickly, with a total of 18 students.

“I could have had 30 people in this class, so the demand exists,” said Professor Robert Morrison, who is in the religion department but offered to teach the class this year and has taught Arabic in the past.

Students are excited by the opportunity to take Arabic.

“The people in the class are really enthused about it,” said sophomore Jonah Stotsky.
Arabic is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. That fact, along with current events, emphasizes its relevance.

“Whitman isn’t a diplomat training institute, but I think that as we become more aware of the importance of the history of the Islamic world and of Middle Eastern history just as something any educated person should know about, that certainly has something to do with why it’s being taught,” said Morrison.

Teaching Arabic is appropriate to Whitman’s interest in diversity and global initiatives.
“Currently we have three European languages, and we teach two of the Asian languages, and my personal feeling is that we don’t teach enough foreign languages, especially for a school that claims to be so interested in global studies,” said Professor Mary Anne O’Neil, who spearheaded the effort to get an Arabic class.

“People I worked with were Professor Elyse Semerdjian in history, who is a speaker of Arabic, and my colleague Professor [Shu-Chu] Wei-Peng in Chinese, and we were trying to figure out now how can we get somebody, what would we do,” said O’Neil. “And in the course of this Professor Morrison, who’s already taught Arabic before, said he would love to do it. So of course we were right on that.”

The future of Arabic at Whitman is uncertain. The administration has been supportive of the foreign language department’s effort to include Arabic in its catalog permanently, but allocating the resources to realize this goal is challenging.

“Whitman is actually not a very rich school. We are well known for doing a lot with a little bit of money. So if I go to President Bridges and say, ‘Well, I think I want you to give me two Arabic teachers, and I want this and I want that,’ well that’s a lot of money. About three million dollars that I’m asking for, and they can’t do something like that,” said O’Neil.

The foreign languages department is in the process of applying for a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence, who would teach Arabic for either a semester or full year.

“The scholar would help us set up a program, help us make contact with programs abroad, give opportunities for our teachers to get involved in the Fulbright program, and I would think on that basis we would have a much, much stronger chance to get someone to invest in an Arabic program,” said O’Neil.

Aside from its inherent merits, offering Arabic has the potential to attract students to Whitman.

“My feeling is that the liberal arts colleges that are doing very well right now are ones that are offering a lot of languages because languages have come back. There was a time, say in the ‘80s and ‘90s, when nobody learned a foreign language, or it was just Spanish. But the students we are getting now are really interested in languages,” said O’Neil. “If you look at schools like Grinnell College and Macalester College who are really at the top of the liberal arts, they offer a lot of foreign languages, they offer lots and lots of variety.”
Several students echoed this sentiment.

“When I was applying to schools, I was looking for the opportunities to take Hebrew, and if they had Arabic here when I applied, it would have been a much more attractive choice,” said sophomore Danny Kaplan, who is majoring in race and ethnic studies.
Adding Arabic to the catalog would satisfy student interest and keep Whitman up to speed in an increasingly global world.

“I am really out to promote our department because I feel that foreign languages are the basis of global study. I would say languages are the way of the future and we need some more of them here,” said O’Neil.