The National Foreign Language Center and The National Security Education

Wednesday, January 16, 2002

On January 16, the National Foreign Language Center (NFLC) and the National Security Education Program (NSEP) convened officials from the federal government and the education community to discuss foreign language education and its affect on the federal workforce and national security.

The briefing was held at the National Press Club, Washington, DC. Ambassador James Collins chaired the proceedings, providing insights about the need for language expertise based on his experiences as Ambassador to the Russian Federation at the time of the Bank of New York scandal:

What we found were entire drawers full of Russian computer documents, of bank transfers, and very, very few people who were capable of dealing with that kind of material in the attorney general?s office in the state of New York. I can assure you that, increasingly, global issues are going to be American issues, and they?re going to come in a form often spoken in another language.

NSEP Director Robert Slater provided a context for understanding the scope of the crisis, emphasizing that ?quick fixes will not work. Serious problems, particularly those that have existed for decades, require serious solutions.? He pointed to crises like Desert Shield, Somalia, and Bosnia, where bursts of attention were directed to language shortfalls, yet nothing was done to remedy the situation.

Ellen Laipson, vice-chair of the National Intelligence Council, spoke of the ongoing demand for language expertise in the intelligence community. ?Whenever there?s a new national security crisis, their quantity [intelligence personnel], their level of expertise, and their availability simply do not match the fast-changing requirements of the intelligence mission. While a news organization or a non-government organization could pick up a native speaker for a short-term assignment, the government more often than not, has to carefully vet people with the appropriate language skills before they can work with classified material,? she stated.

Commander Edward Kane, USN, United States European Command (USEUCOM), addressed the needs of the military. USEUCOM, as Kane described, has responsibility for 91 nations located in Europe, Africa, and parts of the Middle East. ?USEUCOM uses linguists on a daily basis for a variety of tasks, ranging from translating for mobile training teams working with militaries around the theater to analysts translating and analyzing documents recovered from terrorist cells,? he stated. Language is critical as well in ?developing and expanding relationships with our NATO allies and other countries,? who make every effort to conduct operations in English and aid with translation efforts. We cannot expect everyone to speak English, nor would that expectation be politically appropriate or operationally useful,? said Kane.

Defense Department linguist Everette Jordan reinforced the notion, stating that the public often assumes that the world speaks English. ?We therefore rely on someone else?s perspective when translating into English. This puts us at a routine disadvantage when it come to discerning threats against U.S. national security,? said Jordan.

Educator Gilbert Merkx, of Duke University, spoke of a marked decrease in the number of language programs offered at American colleges and universities: ?Less-commonly taught languages will disappear if they?re not sustained by an appreciation of the fact that they are important to the federal government.? He warned that linguists and area scholars are in short supply, since most are from the Kennedy-Johnson generation, when NSEP and NDEA were well funded.

The executive director of the Joint National Committee for Languages, David Edwards, addressed K-12 language education. He stressed that language learning must begin in the elementary schools and continue through graduate school to be successful. ?To build the kind of expertise the government needs in intelligence, defense and economics, we have to recognize that language is