While it is encouraging to hear that President Richard Brodhead is taking initiative in making Duke a global leader in education by meeting with Kapil Sibal, India’s human resource development minister, it is equally disconcerting to find that his own students at Duke receive a substandard international curriculum every day.
Duke’s undergraduate international curriculum lags embarrassingly behind peer institutions such as Harvard University or the University of Pennsylvania. Duke currently packages all Asian and Middle Eastern studies into the Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Department, lumping together Chinese, Japanese, Israeli, Middle Eastern, Arab, Korean and South Asian studies into one underfunded, underrepresented and under-appreciated program.
Consider South Asia alone. If you’re a student at the University of Pennsylvania this semester, you have the option of taking 25 different courses within the Department of South Asian Studies, and that does not even include the 12 different South Asian languages offered nor the other South Asian Studies courses offered by other departments. Meanwhile, if you’re a student at Duke, you have the opportunity of taking one South Asian language and expanding your coursework to include all three courses total regarding South Asia offered this semester. That literally means that I could take every South Asian Studies course offered at Duke this semester, and not even overload my schedule.
President Brodhead, your initiatives regarding Duke’s image abroad are admirable. However, Duke’s international curriculum is embarrassing, and it raises doubts on how Duke can train leaders for tomorrow yet not provide them with the understanding of international dynamics they will need for the interconnected global world which lies ahead of them.
Vivek Upadhyay
President of external affairs, Duke Diya
Trinity ’10
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