The Rice Thresher, Vol. 93, No. 27, Ed. 1 Friday, April 28, 2006 Page: 3 of 20
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THE RICE THRESHER OPINION FRIDAY, APRIL 28,2006
Guest column
Rice needs Hispanic studies doctorate
In his inaugural address of 1912,
President Edgar Odell Lovett
assigned "for the present ... no
upper limit to its educational en-
deavor." Rice's leaders
now aspire to distinc-
tion only in carefully
selected areas. Hispanic
Studies is not among the
selected areas, so there
will not be a Ph.D. in
Hispanic studies at Rice
any time soon. It can't
be for lack of funds.
The recent $20 million
donation to the School
of Humanities makes
untenable any claim that
Rice can't afford a Ph.D. program
in Hispanic studies.
President David Leebron's
Vision for the Second Century
mentions Latin America, but does
not call for raising Hispanic stud-
ies to equity with the 80 percent
of Rice's programs that offer the
Ph.D. In effect, that ratifies a
decision made in the 1950s, when
Rice started Ph.D. programs in
French and German but not in
Spanish. A lot has changed since
then. Fifty-three percent of U.S.
college foreign-language study
is now in Spanish. Our society's
need for advanced bilingual literacy
and better inter-American cultural
understanding grows daily. But the
V2C still does not foresee a Ph.D.
in Hispanic studies in Rice's future.
That is a blind spot.
Capping Hispanic studies at
the master's level stamps the Rice
seal of approval on an undervalu-
ation of the Hispanic languages,
literatures and cultures. Spanish
and Portuguese were the first
European languages in the Western
hemisphere and are together the
native tongues of more than half
of the hemisphere's inhabitants.
They have given us world-class
writers since medieval times and
eleven Nobel Prize winners in
literature since 1900. On none of
them are doctoral dissertations
written at Rice.
Lane
Kauffmann
This is out of step with great
American universities. Not a single
one of the Ivy League universities,
nor Stanford, Emory, Tulane nor
Vanderbilt, provides a
model or justification
for capping Hispanic
studies at the master's
level. Does Rice claim to
know something about
the Hispanic cultures
that those institutions
do not know?
In this time and place,
offering the Ph.D. in
most subjects but not in
Hispanic studies is not
culturally inclusive or
respectful of Hispanic traditions.
It subtly stigmatizes the subject,
demoralizing students and faculty
by holding them in a one-down
position relative to their coun-
terparts. Neither students nor
faculty in Hispanic studies can
benefit from intellectual or peda-
gogical exchange with the bright-
est doctoral students that Rice can
attract in this field. Only Ph.D.
students — not Hispanic studies
master's students — can take
part in the Mellon collaborative
research seminars; rich dialogue
with Hispanic studies perspectives
can't be heard there. Such practice
makes it hard to recruit and retain
the best faculty in the field.
Capping Hispanic studies at
the master's level fails to face the
full challenge of what Sociology
Professor Stephen Klineberg calls
the present "hinge in history"
in Harris County, where almost
75 percent of people under the
age of 30 are either black or
Hispanic — the communities that
have been "the least well-served
historically" by Houston's educa-
tional institutions, according to
Klineberg's Public Perceptions
in Remarkable Times: Houston
Area Survey 1982-2005. Already
three-fifths of K-12 students in
the Houston Independent School
District are Hispanic. Can Rice
credibly engage this community
while aiming for lower than full
excellence — which means a
Ph.D.—in the program that studies
the native languages and cultures of
the growing majority of Houston's
college-age students and the largest
ethnic minority in the country?
Nationally, Hispanics earn only
fourpercentofPh.D.sbutrepresent
14 percent of the population. In Rice
graduating classes from 1998 to
2001, according to a 2003 survey
led by Rice Applied Mathematics
Professor Richard Tapia, only 12
Hispanic students earned Ph.D.s:
six in sciences and engineering,
five in social sciences and one in
humanities — history. Why the
lower number in humanities? Wild
guess: Rice offers no Ph.D. in the
humanities program with the high-
est number of Hispanic applicants.
Keeping the ceiling on Hispanic
studies says to the world that at Rice,
Hispanic languages and cultures
aren't seen as important enough
to merit investment or study at the
doctoral level. In 2006, that stance is
unworthy of a great universitv and
unfair to a great culture.
History professor John Boles
has asked all of us to strive to
fulfill Lovett's vision for Rice by its
centennial in 2012, claiming 'To
do anything less is not to be true
to Lovett's vision."
When Lovett assigned "for the
present... no upper limit to [our]
educational endeavour" in his
inaugural address — delivered on
Columbus Day, El Dia de la Raza,
in 1912 — did he mean to authorize
indefinite or invidious limits on
development in key areas of the
curriculum? I believe there was no
such blind spot in I>ovett's vision. If
he were alive today, he would see
very clearly that leaving a cap on
Hispanic studies going into Rice's
second century is incompatible
with a "university standing of the
highest grade."
I jane Kauffmann is an associate profes-
sor ofHispanic studies and,former chair
of that department (1996-2002).
Guest column
Christianity condemns all apostasy equally
"God hates fags." At least
according to Fred Phelps, Sr.,
leader of the Westboro Baptist
Church — though any ties he has
to Baptists are tenuous at
best. He and his church
first gained national
notoriety in 1998 when
they picketed Matthew
Shepard's funeral with
signs proclaiming that
God hates homosexu-
als and everyone who
supports them.
More recently, they
have picketed the funer-
als of soldiers killed in
Iraq, heartlessly carry-
ing signs with the same message
of God's wrath — this time con-
demning the dead for supporting
a country that protects gays. Even
Congress has responded to these
outrages. Since Phelps and his
church invoke the name of God
and cite passages from the Bible,
many associate their message
of condemnation with genuine
Christian beliefs. However, Fred
Phelps's message is as si milar to the
Gospel as Sewall's dim stairwells
are to Willy's statue at noon on a
bright day.
Christianity, like nearly every
other religion, begins with an ac-
count of what's wrong with the
world. If you have seen the film
Invisible Children, then you have
an idea of what I mean when I say
that the world is not as it should
be. Most Christians believe God
created humans to live in a relation-
ship of loving obedience with him,
but that we rebelled and decided to
try to take care of ourselves. God
Stephen
Adams
detested the evil ways in which we
began to harm each other — not
to mention the great arrogance
of flipping our creator the meta-
physical bird. Thus, he
decided to abandon us.
And since God keeps all
things alive, this means
decay and death.
But this is not dogma.
This is merely the
Christian explanation
for what's wrong with the
world — why hate, war
and crime exist.
God is not OK with
all of the pain, suffer-
ing and cruelty in the
world — a feeling any average col-
lege student would share. Phelps
and his church miss the mark when
they ignore the Christian reality
that every person on the planet
deserves death because everyone
has participated in this rebellion.
By condemning homosexuality
in the harshest language, Phelps
also condemns himself, because
in God's eyes everyone who rebels
against God deserves hell. But this
is not Jesus' teaching.
The good news is that although
God loathes people's rebellion
and the pain it causes the world,
he still loves the people he has
created. Phelps and his church
paint a contrary picture of God,
failing to represent the Christian
God for whom love and support
have been modus operandi since
the creation.
As for picketing funerals, no
one who has received forgiveness
and salvation should go around
condemning those who have not
found it yet. Instead, they should
offer hope to those who suffer by
giving the same message Jesus
gave. As John 3:17 states, "For
God did not send His Son into the
world to condemn the world, but
that the world through Him might
be saved."
Stephen Adams is a Hanszen
College junior.
Rice Voices
Monolinguism prevents
student achievement
Recently, I witnessed a rash
of complaints from Rice seniors
and alumni about the change in
the commencement diploma
policy. With suppos-
edly nothing else to do
with their time, they
whined that their di-
plomas will be mailed
to them instead of
being handed out dur-
ing commencement
After spending a
few minutes mourn-
ing the loss of valuable
newspaper space as a
result of their asinine
comments, I realized
there is an actual rea-
son for graduates to feel uneasy
as they receive their neatly
rolled sheets of blank paper next
Saturday. In addition to these
symbolic substitutes, many
students' real diplomas will not
be worth much, either.
Apoorva
Shah
Language is power,
and if we do not
adapt and improve
we will end up lost
in translation.
In our ever-globalizing com-
munity, more students from
around the world are learning
the same skills and receiving the
same high quality education pre
viously reserved for elite students
like those at Rice. Nowadays,
there are hundreds of thousands
of Chinese and Indian students on
the other side of the world eagerly
waiting to take our jobs away for
a fraction of the salary.
But there is hope. We are still
young, and our minds are still
nimble enough to learn more.
It is called learning agility, and
I pray that our new graduates
have it. I hope they develop
their human capital by learning
languages they were too lazy to
learn at Rice, and I hope return-
ing students will think twice
before dismissing language
courses as nothing more than
"entertainment" electives.
The dearth of Rice students
in language classes other than
Spanish and French never ceases
to amaze me. We have a Center
forthe Study of Languages, but it
is a center of nothing more than
instability and desperate pleas
to fill up even one section of a
language class. Why
are Portuguese, Hindi
and Arabic classes
not filled to the brim
with engineering
and science students
wanting to be on the
front line of future
development? Why
are these classes not
loaded with humani-
ties and social science
students wanting to
understand the societ-
ies that will determine
our world's future?
I believe the fault lies not
only in students' lack of initia-
tive, but also in the faculty and
administration's disgustingly
poor job of informing students
about the importance of language
development—even for students
who are mechanical engineers
and chemists. It takes an act as
simple as opening a newspaper
to realize the importance of
communication in this global-
ized world. But we seem to act
as if everything important will
be handed to us on a silver plate,
translated into English.
But perhaps I am just too
naive to realize that academia
must be as far out of touch with
reality as humanly possible.
Please prove to me this is not
true. Students, get back on
ESTHER, and sign up for a
language course—and stick with
it past the first semester. Faculty
and administration, inform your
students about the opportunities
available. Just imagine architects
fluent in Portuguese or econo-
mists fluent in Arabic. language
is power, and if we do not adapt
and improve we will end up lost
in translation.
So before we worry about the
bird flu, there is a more ominous
disease we must combat on this
campus — monolinguism. If
Rice is to become what President
David Leebron aspires it be in the
Vision for the Second Century,
students must start leaving this
university with a palette of lan-
guages. Rice must start acting
less like an ivory tower and more
like a tower of Babel.
Apoorva Shah is a Sid Richard-
son College sophomore.
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Brown, David. The Rice Thresher, Vol. 93, No. 27, Ed. 1 Friday, April 28, 2006, newspaper, April 28, 2006; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth442999/m1/3/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.