Soon, top-rated Harvard University in Massachusetts, U.S. will be offering language courses for Tagalog, Bahasa Indonesia, and Thai, according to the Harvard Crimson, the institute's student newspaper.
The new courses will come as a new push to develop Southeast Asian studies at Harvard, and the university's Department of South Asian Studies will look to hire three preceptors to teach the languages for the 2023 – 2024 academic year.
Elizabeth K. Liao, executive director for the Harvard Asia Center, expressed her hope that these new hires would significantly impact the center's "long-term mission to build Southeast Asian studies at Harvard, as well as the university's engagement with the region".
James Robson, director of the Asia Center and a professor for East Asian Language and Civilizations studies, also mentioned that the administration was able to acquire US$1 million from the budget to fund the Tagalog preceptor position, although funding it for more than three years would probably not be entirely sustainable.
However, this is part of an effort to create a wider awareness of Southeast Asia at the university, and possibly create deeper interest in related subjects.
"What I'm hoping is that if we can demonstrate that there's demand for these languages and students show up and are excited about it, then hopefully we can also use this to convince the administration to further support Southeast Asian studies generally and language instruction in particular," he said.
In the U.S., Tagalog is one of the most widely-spoken non-English languages behind Spanish and Cantonese/Mandarin, with approximately 1.7 million individuals conversing in the language originating in the Philippines, and the move by Harvard to address it as an academic subject has been celebrated by observers.
Eleanor Wikstrom, the co-president of the Harvard Philippine Forum (HPF) and editorial chair of the Harvard Crimson, said that getting the language offered at Harvard had been one of the group's top goals, while HPF co-president Marcky Antonio said that proper steps would need to be taken to ensure the language was taught correctly.
"While this is the first Tagalog language course that's ever been offered in Harvard's history, I think there's also this sense that we need to make sure we teach this right — not only Tagalog language, but Filipino culture as a whole," he said.
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Cover image sourced from Christian Science Monitor and CNBC.
