In the wake of the report, Professor Deborah Cohn published an essay in The Conversation on the implications of the survey for national security. She noted that the launching of Sputnik by the Soviet Union in 1957 caught the U.S. by surprise. Even as the event prompted deep concerns about the nation’s ability to compete technologically in the space race, it also brought to the foreground the fact that there was a severe shortage of Russian speakers in the U.S. who were able to monitor Soviet scientific and military activities. In 1958, Cohn observes, the U.S. passed the National Defense Education Act, which authorized funding to strengthen U.S. education in math, science, and, yes, language study. Her essay traces how language study has waxed and waned in the ensuing decades, and how the recent downturn in language study, which has resulted in enormous shortfalls in speakers of languages critical to national security (e.g., Russian, Chinese, Arabic) today, has similar implications for national security. Russia’s current role as a top cyber threat, for example, means that the U.S. cannot afford to have as few speakers of Russian as it currently does.

Professor Cohn’s research attracted widespread attention. She has been interviewed by multiple sources, including The Atlantic, Times Higher Education, Public News Service, Indiana Public Media, and other sources about the general importance of language study. Readers of La gaceta are, of course, very aware of the numerous professional, social, and other benefits of language study, and we hope that you, too, will speak up about them with colleagues, friends and family, school board members, and more.