A Discussion was held in the Senate-House. Deputy Vice-Chancellor Revd Roger Greeves was presiding, with the Junior Proctor, two Pro-Proctors, the Registrary, and ten other persons present.
The following Report was discussed:
Report of the Faculty Board of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, dated 22 January 2008, on a new Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Tripos (p. 498).
Professor H. VAN DE VEN:
The proposals for a new Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Tripos are the result of the Full Review of the Faculty of Oriental Studies set up by the General Board in July 2004. The report of the Review Committee, which was submitted to the General Board in July 2005, was critical of the Faculty's teaching and governance arrangements. The latter have now been reformed radically, including by the creation of two Departments, one for East Asian Studies and one for Middle Eastern Studies.
The proposed new Tripos addresses criticisms in the Review Committee's report of the Faculty's educational programme. The Committee believed that the Faculty's teaching needed to be rationalized, that more attention should be paid to the modern and contemporary world to meet student demand, and that the Tripos as it existed then was far too complex. In designing the new Tripos, the Faculty has been guided by the basic thought that the cultures, histories, and societies of the areas we cover can only be studied effectively on the basis of a thorough understanding of their languages. That has always been the Faculty's position and this has not changed.
At the same time, the new Tripos simplifies our teaching programme. The old Tripos effectively consisted of six different Triposes as each of the Faculty's six sections delivered its own teaching programme. The proposed new Tripos consists of two clearly identified pathways, one for East Asian and one for Middle Eastern Studies. Within these pathways, students can specialize in a particular language such as Chinese or Arabic or Persian, but they will also take a number of shared disciplinary courses.
Essentially the proposed new Tripos defines a set of core papers that our students must take. These consist mostly of language papers. In addition, students will be asked to select a number of content papers belonging to one of the two pathways. As well, at Part IB and Part II, students will also select papers prescribed by the Faculty Board in the Easter Term one year but the next one before the examinations. This increased flexibility will make it possible for FAMES teaching to respond rapidly to changes in student interest, to developments in our fields of study, and to changes in teaching staff. This ensures that our teaching programme is reviewed regularly and can be updated quickly and easily, which was not always the case in the past.
The new Tripos has been widely discussed within the Faculty over no less than three years. Consultation exercises have been conducted with all relevant Directors of Studies, with current students, as well as with the Faculties of Divinity, Modern and Medieval Languages, and Archaeology and Anthropology, from which the new Tripos will borrow papers. The response has been uniformly positive.
In short, the proposed new Tripos preserves what was good in the Faculty's educational programmes in the past and for which it has justly been famous, namely the insistence that rigorous language training is essential if we want to understand the societies of the Middle East and Asia. Similarly, both pathways demand that students obtain a thorough introduction to the histories and traditions of the societies in which they are interested. At the same time, student choice has been increased and opportunities to study the modern and contemporary world have been enhanced considerably. As well, innovation has now been built into our mechanisms. I therefore urge the Regent House to approve the proposals.
Professor G. R. EVANS:
Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, having sound rationales for moving disciplinary boundaries within the taxonomy of knowledge is important. A great university's freedom to design its own courses should not be taken for granted in the present climate. Changes such as are proposed here have to be defensible in the long not only the short term. Members of the Regent House may recall the splendid speech Professor D. W. Holton made at the time of the dissolution of the Department of Other Languages in Cambridge in 2007, which set out its history. 'The name 'Other Languages' has often attracted curiosity, sometimes mirth. One might imagine it was a hastily thought-up ad hoc solution to a short-term administrative need, which then became institutionalized',1 he said.
Even if that was not the case for the Other Languages, as he convincingly argued, one is bound to be anxious that it may be the reality here, given the recent contentious history of major changes to the organization of the language Triposes.
One of the most important responsibilities of a great university is to balance its resources and its duty to scholarship. The recommendations on which the proposed new Tripos structure has been designed, this Report tells us, include 'rationalizing teaching provision'. Notions of present 'viability' seem to lurk behind this new structure. It is not unreasonable to be concerned when an institution (nearly) eight hundred years old allows short-term considerations to drive academic decision making.
These two 'pathways', 'East Asian' and 'Middle Eastern', do not seem to run across the same intellectual landscape. Indeed, it appears to be acknowledged that they are to all intents and purposes parallel lines which do not meet: 'The structure of the Tripos does not allow for the concurrent study of languages from both pathways. The Faculty Board consider that the combination of languages from both Departments of the Faculty would not be feasible due to the different linguistic and cultural imperatives that underlie them'.
Other determining factors have been more obviously academically driven: 'making the Tripos more accessible to students taking other Triposes; reviewing the heavy emphasis on language learning; and addressing the need to introduce more thematic and more contemporary papers.'
I am, in my present short-term capacity as project leader of a project funded by the HEFCE Leadership, Governance and Management Fund2 taking an active interest in student mobility and the problems which can arise when students move from one country (and culture) to another to study for degrees. It does not appear to have been envisaged that applications might arrive from overseas for undergraduate courses in this area, from native speakers of these languages. Were the considerations I have just listed looked at from the point of view of the consequences of encouraging (for example) students from India and China and Japan and Korea to come to Cambridge for their first degrees?
There is no indication in this Report that they were. Rather the opposite. Mention of concerns about 'the educational standards that can be delivered in terms of language proficiency when studied concurrently' suggest not. 'The Faculty Board also consider that there was currently insufficient evidence of substantial student interest or demand for such combinations' could look very different with a spot of international student mobility.
I ask this second cluster of questions, for the reason which underlies my first concern. Just as Cambridge has responsibilities stretching through centuries, so, surely, it should think 'globally' when it undertakes a major revision of a Tripos?
1 Reporter, 2006-07, p. 890.
2 Improving Dispute Resolution, http://www.staffs.ac.uk/idr/.