Free Republic

Ever since Benjamin Franklin wielded his fluent French to persuade Parisian elites to support the War of Independence, foreign language knowledge has enabled American diplomats and representatives—not to mention spies—to promote the nation’s interests. During World War II and throughout the Cold War, colleges provided education in languages deemed essential for national defense. Those programs were a great success. In the 1940s, Harvard, Michigan, and Berkeley founded secret schools in Japanese, often led by Japanese-Americans. Other institutions opened foreign language programs thereafter. In the wake of Sputnik in 1958, Congress passed the National Defense Education Act. In recent years, however,...

BOISE, Idaho – A federal appeals court delivered a stinging rebuke Friday to the Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 detention policies, ruling that former Attorney General John Ashcroft can be held liable for people who were wrongfully detained as material witnesses after 9/11. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the government's improper use of material witnesses after Sept. 11 was "repugnant to the Constitution and a painful reminder of some of the most ignominious chapters of our national history." The court found that a man who was detained as a witness in a federal terrorism...

Global Linguistic Citizenship for All by: Bethany Stotts, January 28, 2008 ..... According to the DOD 2005 “Defense Language Transformation Roadmap,” “Language skill and regional expertise have not been regarded as war-fighting skills, and are not sufficiently incorporated into operational or contingency planning... Language skill and regional expertise are not valued as Defense core competencies yet they are as important as critical weapon systems.” Professor Scott Wible, an English professor at West Virginia University, criticized the DoD for its use of militaristic analogies when referring to the vital role language proficiency plays in promoting national security. “Such ideas send a...