Brandeis considers eliminating the major in Hebrew

Inside Higher Ed reports that a panel charged with recommending possible money-saving reductions at Brandeis University has included eliminating the major in Hebrew language and literature and the minor in Yiddish and East European Jewish culture.

Does the English Department Have a Jewish Problem?

Inside Higher Ed’s Scott Jaschik has written another fine article, this one reporting on a panel discussion at the Modern Language Association on the relative paucity of experts teaching Jewish literature. The panel was entitled “Does the English Department Have a Jewish Problem?”

The underlying premise of the panel was that English departments that would never allow themselves to be without experts in the literatures of many racial and ethnic groups in the United States don’t think twice about failing to have a knowledge base in American Jewish literature. Further, the view of many here is that discussions about multicultural literature that ought to include Jewish writers simply don’t.

Jaschik’s detailed overview of the panel discussion could well serve as the starting point for a faculty conversation on how different religious and ethnic traditions are treated in today’s literature, history, and cultural studies departments.