Author: Lucy Feickert
Arabic students at Occidental are expressing frustration with the lack of advanced Arabic classes the department offers, limited by low student enrollment and a lack of cooperation by other institutions in the area.
While the Spanish and French studies department houses the Arabic program and offers advanced Arabic (300 level), they are not able to offer the course every year, according to Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Irene Girton.
“There are 300 level courses in the curriculum, but because of enrollment, we don’t offer them every year, and that’s true across the curriculum,” Girton said. “There are a lot of courses, especially at the upper division and especially in departments that don’t have a ton of majors, or any majors at all in the case of Arabic, that don’t get offered every year.”
Many Arabic students study abroad before reaching advanced levels or start taking Arabic later in their college careers, leaving the potential 300 level Arabic classes too small to be funded, according to Assistant Professor of Spanish and French Studies Hanan Elsayed.
Diplomacy and World Affairs (DWA) major Mark Abman (junior) studied Arabic last semester abroad in Jordan. Coming back to campus this semester, he is participating in unofficial independent study in Arabic because the college did not offer an advanced Arabic class. He and two fellow advanced Arabic students meet daily to review, work through their textbook and quiz each other on grammar and vocabulary.
“This semester what [the department] was able to offer us was a conversation class that meets twice a week for one hour, which is good, but not good enough to sustain a good level of Arabic,” Abman said. “We’re happy with the conversation class, but we’re frustrated, and we feel like the administration hasn’t really made an effort to accommodate our interest in the language.”
DWA major Dina Yazdani (sophomore) has been taking Middle East studies classes through the DWA department. She has not taken any language courses yet due to scheduling, though she would like to continue the Arabic studies she began in high school.
“For the past two semesters all of the Arabic classes have always been during one of the DWA Middle East courses,” Yazdani said. “It makes no sense because those people who are interested in Arabic who are also DWA students interested in the Middle East can’t do both. It’s just frustrating because if you really want to be a comprehensive scholar of the Middle East as an undergrad student, you should have the ability to take Arabic as a language and then Arabic as an international relations course.”
While Girton says there are no plans from the Spanish and French studies department to expand the Arabic program at this point, she maintains that there is an interest in sustaining Middle East studies across departments.
“There’s always an interest in connecting departments and curriculum that are working in the same or similar areas,” Girton said. “So I know, for example, that DWA and the Arabic program and the history department and religious studies are fours places where there’s curriculum around the Middle East that obviously includes Arabic language. While there might not be an infinite number of classes in Arabic itself, there’s definitely an interest in the college in Middle Eastern studies across the curriculum, and clearly Arabic’s part of that.”
Yazdani’s does not see this communication occurring.
“Something that needs to happen is the Arabic department, and the DWA department and other departments that offer Middle East courses need to talk to each other to really plan this out because it’s not fair for us,” Yazdani said. “It’s frustrating because if I can’t pursue Middle East studies at Oxy, then most likely next semester I want to go do it somewhere else because this is something that since sophomore year of high school I’ve wanted to pursue. So if I can’t do it here, then what’s the point?”
For the few students who were abroad in Jordan last semester, like Abman, the college was unable to provide advanced Arabic courses when they returned to Occidental this spring, limiting their progress in Arabic studies. Some students attempted to take classes at other institutions as part of the Southern California Consortium on International Studies (SOCCIS), an association of colleges in Southern California that allows students to take classes at other institutions without paying additional tuition. The attempts by these students, with the help of Girton, to set up an advanced Arabic class at University of Southern California (USC) this semester were unsuccessful.
“It turns out that USC is not interested in the moment in participating in that consortium, and we were really disappointed because they’re the partner institution that’s closest,” Girton said. “They’re much larger than we are and they have far more language offerings. We really tried to make it work for the advanced Arabic students – who were willing to go to USC five days a week, which is how often they teach the class there – but USC was not willing to partner with us.”
With limited course offerings and no Arabic major or minor, Abman thinks the expansion of the Arabic program is important for Occidental as a global institution and the future of global studies.
“Arabic is just an important language,” Abman said. “I think it’s largely become a political language, and a language that’s been very relevant to international affairs. Oxy’s a school that really prides itself on its politics majors and international relations – its international focus – and I think that Arabic needs to be one of those languages that we focus on to maintain that international focus.”
This article has been archived, for more requests please contact us via the support system.
