On March 30, Helen Frank, MHC ’25, attended an annual department tea for the German Studies and Russian and Eurasian Studies departments at Mount Holyoke. Frank was looking forward to seeing classmates within her major that she had not seen that semester.
The roughly two dozen students in the room introduced themselves and spoke about their affiliations with the respective departments. Many chose to speak about their love for the departments and interest in their subjects. Some mentioned their gratitude for professors and expressed their excitement about upcoming course offerings.
“It was normal,” Frank said.
Before the event ended, Provost Lisa Sullivan stood up to make an announcement: a motion had been introduced to dissolve the German Studies and Russian and Eurasian Studies departments at Mount Holyoke during the next academic year.
“At first everybody was shocked,” Hannah Watt, MHC ’25 said. “And then people started getting really angry.”
The Dean of the College and the Provost opened the floor up to the students to ask questions, and students quickly expressed their disapproval. “I could see…this uncertainty, this confusion, [and] this really clear anger,” Julia Burm, MHC ’25 said. Burm had declared a minor in Russian and Eurasian studies that morning, and this was their first department gathering as a declared student. “It was a really fun event that immediately just got flipped upside down,” Burm said.
The motion, put forth on March 28, is to “sunset” the German and Russian and Eurasian studies departments. If approved, the departments will be dissolved, effective next academic year, and Mount Holyoke will withdraw from the Five College Certificate in Russian, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies, as they will offer fewer classes in the field. The motion was proposed by Mount Holyoke’s Academic Priorities Committee (APC), citing low enrollment in both programs and a recommendation from the college’s accreditors to reduce the number of majors offered by Mount Holyoke. Faculty will vote on May 9 to decide whether to cut or keep the departments.
In a statement to the Sophian, Mount Holyoke affirmed their commitment to current students pursuing the majors, and emphasized that students currently in the programs will be able to complete their degrees. “Should the faculty pass this motion, the College will support all existing majors and minors at current resource levels through the completion of their degree work,” they said. “Future students will still have access to German and Russian studies through the Five College consortium and Mount Holyoke has committed to reallocate resources from German and Russian studies to other language opportunities if the majors are retired.”
But students fear that in spite of the college’s commitment to continue to support other languages, dissolving language departments will continue at Mount Holyoke. “It’s clear that, specifically in the languages, there’s faculty who think that language departments shouldn’t exist,” Watt said. After a short period of shock, sadness, and anger, students from both departments banded together to create “Save Mount Holyoke Languages” to advocate against the threat of dissolution.
The organization has tried to sway faculty opinion through a letter to faculty members, an online petition, alumni and donor outreach and a protest during Admitted Students’ Day.
Their actions have prioritized highlighting the reasons why they believe their fields are globally, academically and personally important and also emphasized why these departments are essential to education at Mount Holyoke.
Phoebe Grabowski, MHC ’26, first started taking Russian because she is ethnically Eastern European, and quickly found a community within her classes. “The Russian department really is the only place where I’ve been able to talk about my heritage,” she said. Grabowski said that the environment in her Russian language class is particularly special. “For an interdisciplinary school, you don’t really get a lot of that interdisciplinary friendship, and language courses are just kind of that one place where everyone has [that],” she said.
Frank agreed with Grabowski, and said there is also a distinct environment in the German studies classes that she has taken. “I really enjoyed all my German classes at Mount Holyoke. I feel like I enjoy them more and more each semester, because we really focus a lot on not just speaking the language but complex topics that have been so helpful in expanding my worldview,” she said. “It’s been incredibly valuable.”
Frank entered Mount Holyoke knowing that she wanted to major or minor in German, and is concerned that this information isn’t being given to prospective students who may also be interested in the program. “One of the big grievances in the room that the students expressed really articulately when the Provost asked if there were any questions was the feeling of lack of transparency,” she said. Burm agreed, and said that they wish the administration could be clearer with students about the changes. “It’s hard to get the word out about certain things and have transparency when this all seems very rushed and forced,” they said.
The potential dissolution of the departments at Mount Holyoke speaks to a larger national trend of removing language instruction in higher education. According to a report from the Modern Language Association, between 2013-2016 enrollment in languages in higher education institutions across the US dropped by 9.2 percent. The students acknowledge this trend and argue that these programs are too valuable to lose.
In a combined letter from Save Mount Holyoke Languages, students highlighted the war in Ukraine and an international uptick in violence from right-wing groups as reasons why the departments are globally pertinent. The students also underscored the interdisciplinary and global nature of the departments as essential to the college.
Daniel Brooks, a Visiting Lecturer in Russian and Eurasian Studies at Mount Holyoke, agreed with their conviction in the importance of the departments. “We need to have not just linguistic knowledge, [of the region] but cultural knowledge, historical knowledge, economic knowledge and things like that,” he said. He also spoke of the interdisciplinary nature of the field. “We design our courses in an interdisciplinary mode, which is a function of how the discipline emerged in the 20th century [during the Cold War],” Brooks said. “I meet my students where they are in terms of their interests across disciplines and try to find ways to work with them.”
Karen Remmler, the Mary Lyon Professor of Humanities at Mount Holyoke and the current chair of the German department also emphasized the interdisciplinary nature of the departments. “We have really wanted to be a department that goes way beyond the borders of learning German language,” she said. “We’ve always encouraged students to combine their studies here at Mount Holyoke College with study abroad but also by connecting their courses in German Studies with their courses in other fields, including sciences.”
She also spoke about the current importance of the German studies field. “In order to address, for instance, issues of antisemitism or fascism, it’s really important to have an understanding of German history but also the way that that history has been interpreted,” she said. “I think that we provide a means for students to grapple with some of the major issues that we’re facing right now.”
Students hope that the faculty will not vote to dissolve the departments on May 9; even if they do, the students do not plan on giving up. “It definitely will not be the end of this movement,” Watt said. “I think that you will see that this movement is going to be something that continues over the next few years, regardless of what happens.”
