"What does such an event have to do with the Language Flagship Program specifically and military funding for language training more generally? A 2012 article in the University of Texas at Austin’s Life & Letters entitled “Humanities and the Military” describes a collaboration between Flagship students there and Texas Army National Guard soldiers in a “weekend-long language and culture workshop conducted by the College of Liberal Arts’ Department of Middle Eastern Studies and Center for Middle Eastern Studies for soldiers who will soon be deployed to Afghanistan.” One of the coordinators of the program is quoted as saying “All of the participants seemed intent on learning as much as they could about Afghani culture because they knew that this information might help them accomplish their mission more effectively.” This collaboration is painted in positive terms: linguistic and cultural information being used to help improve relations between two culturally disparate groups. The context for this contact, though, is war and occupation, and such information, as we have seen, can be used to gruesome effect. The university seems to be aware of this potential, or at least of the danger of having its government funded students associated with such a collaboration. In a subsequent version of the article, all references to the Flagship program have been removed, as has the following statement by the director of the NSEP: “We are proud of the partnerships that The Language Flagship programs have made with ROTC and the services.”
Even if not a single US student were using the language and culture he or she learned to such ends, it is important to think very carefully about how our knowledge and expertise might be used by the entities that fund this education. After my stabbing, an Egyptian friend tried to counter some of my doubts by telling me that a knife-maker is not responsible for the uses his knives are put to. Perhaps not, but what if that knife maker happens to be sponsored by the military?"
Even if not a single US student were using the language and culture he or she learned to such ends, it is important to think very carefully about how our knowledge and expertise might be used by the entities that fund this education. After my stabbing, an Egyptian friend tried to counter some of my doubts by telling me that a knife-maker is not responsible for the uses his knives are put to. Perhaps not, but what if that knife maker happens to be sponsored by the military?"
