Racial and cultural harmony is hard work. The news about an episode at Duke's biostats program is a good example of the intricacies involved.
According to what is known at the moment (reported also by the Duke Chronicle), the program director of the Master of Biostatistics program, who is also an assistant professor, wrote students a note asking that they always speak English in the department's building and in professional settings. This email was aimed at Chinese graduate students, which form the bulk of the enrollment of many graduate programs at U.S. colleges (although I'm not sure about this particular one).
Further, the email dispatch was motivated by two unnamed Duke professors who went to the program director to complain about Chinese students speaking Chinese "very loudly" in a "lounge or study area".
The two professors demanded photos of the Chinese students to identify the offenders "in case the students ever applied for an internship or were interviewed by them." The program director warned students that speaking their mother tongue would have "unintended consequences" that could affect their careers and recommendations.
***
According to the articles, the school has thus far taken the following steps:
- The program director has immediately been replaced.
- The Master's program has been placed "under review".
- The Dean of the Medical School issued an apology, affirming that there is no restriction of languages spoken outside the classroom, that speaking other languages outside the classroom would not affect careers or recommendations, and that student privacy will be protected.
***
It looks like the program director is being positioned as the scapegoat. There is no mention at all about the two professors who violated the students' privacy, and threatened their careers and recommendations.
The outgoing program director gave the students great advice. The behavior of the two professors validates the point of view that it is in the students' interest to speak English. The Duke Chronicle did not reprint the Dean's email but saying that speaking other languages would not affect careers does not make it so - in light of evidence to the contrary!
Speaking one's mother tongue to someone else with the same mother tongue is completely natural to every human being; and doing so when living in a foreign country is to make a connection to one's heritage.
Now, practice speaking English while studying in the U.S. is also good advice but that ought to be a choice.
Comments