To the Editor:

The importance of Russia, her geopolitical standing, her language, literature and culture, is hard to overestimate. This is well understood in Washington but, sadly, not in Ithaca, N.Y. While the U.S. administration has been doing its utmost to improve and bolster relations with Russia, the Cornell administration has been gradually dismantling the Russian Department that was so lovingly built over three quarters of a century by Ernest J. Simmons, Vladimir Nabokov, George Gibian and many others. And now the University considers shutting down the Russian Department altogether. With the imminent retirement of two professors of Russian Literature, not only does the University refuse to replace them but instead contrives to append the remaining faculty, plus the Russian Language Division, to the Comparative Literature Department. When and if it indeed happens, Cornell will earn the dubious distinction of being the only Ivy League school without a Department of Russian.

Just recently, Cornell Administration has eliminated its ESL, Swedish and Dutch Programs and severely maimed the Department of Theatre, Film and Dance. Now, it is the turn of the Russian Department.

Ezra Cornell, who founded this great university with the pioneering idea that “any person can find instruction in any study,” and his good friend Andrew Dickson White, who had served as the U.S. minister to Russia (1892-1894) and made an acquaintance of Leo Tolstoy, are undoubtedly turning in their graves. 

Prof. Gavriel Shapiro, Russian