Posted on 09/03/2002 1:03:54 PM PDT by Utah Girl
PROVO - Here's the mission, if you choose to accept it: Track the clean-cut student quietly living in Provo, preparing for a linchpin post in national security.
Code name: Cougar.
Sound far-fetched? Brigham Young University doesn't mind.
BYU pays scant attention to protests by some scholars over an initiative by an arm of the U.S. Department of Defense to use colleges as training grounds for future federal workers who can court international diplomats or crack foreign military codes.
The university eagerly embraces its new role as one of four "flagship" schools to lead education initiatives in languages considered critical to national security.
The schools will establish centers to increase the number of students who speak Arabic, Korean and Chinese.
A three-year $600,000 grant - part of the National Flagship Language Initiative of the Defense Department's National Security Education Program - will be used by the LDS Church-owned school to produce more graduates fluent in Chinese.
"This will be an outstanding opportunity and resource for our many students who are studying Chinese," said Sandra Rogers, BYU's vice president for international relations.
UCLA, the University of Hawaii and the University of Washington also were picked for the pilot year of the language initiative, launched to correct the nation's dearth of foreign-language experts that became apparent in the days after Sept. 11.
But some American scholars stand firm against efforts by NSEP to fund such language programs or student scholarships, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.
If the department's money is accepted, say members of such groups as the Middle East Studies Association of North America, students traveling abroad in defense-funded programs would be placed in danger and professors of the courses would be perceived as government agents.
Academic types also worry that college administrators who have government-funded projects would discourage speech that is critical of the government for fear of losing funding.
Melvin Luthy, an associate dean of humanities and director of BYU's Center for Language Studies, said such attitudes are a "holdover from the '60s," when government distrust ran high on college campuses.
"This really is a language program," said Luthy.
And scholarships and opportunities to study overseas won't be "just for students of Chinese," Luthy said.
It will be open to law students, engineers, nurses - anyone who wants a language skill, he said.
There's no doubt the program's aim is to fill needs in the federal government, however.
In this era of a global marketplace, some 80 federal agencies need staff who can read, write, speak, even detect nuance and irony, in languages ranging from Albanian to Vietnamese.
Students at BYU have an advantage while competing for such jobs because many have substantial language skills from living overseas during two-year proselyting missions for the church, Luthy said.
"This will help many people in many disciplines," Luthy said.
E-MAIL: jeffh@desnews.com
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