Chimes sat down with professors across the world and classical languages at Calvin to discuss the recent cuts to the classical and world languages in context.
In the 1996-97 academic year, Calvin had a Classical languages major, a Greek major and minor, a Latin major and minor, a Dutch major, a French major and minor, a German major, a Japanese minor and study group minor, and a Spanish major and minor, according to the course catalog. In the 1997-98 academic year, a Dutch minor and classes in Chinese were added. In the 2003-04 academic year, classes in the Twi language were taught, Japanese was moved under the Asian Studies, and a Chinese track was added to the Asian Studies major. In the 2007-08 academic year, classes in Swahili were added. By the 2010-11 academic year, Swahili courses were cut, and courses in Korean were added.
The language courses and programs offered remained relatively unchanged until the 2016-17 academic year, when the Greek major, Latin major, and Classical languages major and minor were cut. Then, in the 2020-21 academic year, what remained of the Classics department was cut, including the Greek and Latin minors, along with the Japanese major, minor and study group minor. However, courses continued to be offered in these languages. In the 2021-22 academic year, the Chinese major, minor and study group minor were cut (though courses in Chinese were still offered), and the German major was cut. In the 2023-24 academic year, Greek language classes were officially discontinued. In the most recent round of cuts in fall 2025, the German minor and the French major and minor were cut.
Department restructuring
Prior to the 2020-21 academic year, when the World Languages department was founded, the languages were all split into different departments. Otto Selles, professor of French and chair of the World Languages department since its founding, said, “The department of World Languages really started July 2020 after the beginning of COVID. So until that date, it was the French department, the Germanic and Asian languages department, and Spanish department.”
Herman De Vries, professor of Dutch and German, noted that the combining of the languages into one department coincided with cuts in the languages. “Up until that point, it didn’t really make sense to be one World Languages department because we were much larger back then, and we had our own cultures … It just didn’t make sense to be one entity,” he said. “But once the cuts of 2021 shrunk us significantly, then it made sense to become one department.”
Changes to the core
Along with a new department, the 2020-21 academic year also brought a decrease in the number of language classes students are required to take for the core as part of a core restructuring. According to previous Chimes reporting, faculty assembly voted to approve the new core, which required 40-50 credits instead of the previous 75-91, on Dec. 8, 2020. The new core went into effect during the 2021-22 school year.
De Vries explained that “the liberal arts disciplines, many of them, live or die based on core requirements.” He noted that many liberal arts disciplines, including languages, attract new students to their majors because of their positive experiences in their core-required classes. He said that with the reduction in the core, “the enrollments declined; then we just became vulnerable to cuts … it’s a supply and demand economic scenario in some ways, but the demand is partially created by how you structure your curriculum.” De Vries said, “I think the core change that happened in 2021 was really the death knell, to be quite frank, for some of the languages.”
Selles noted that the core affected his French course the year it went into effect. “I remember I had a full 201 class when the core came in. And then most of those students changed from the old core to the new core, and only half continued to 202,” he said.
Jolene Vos-Camy, professor of French, noted the importance of students being required to take upper-level language courses. “[In the previous core], students had to take through 202 if they had not done their 4 years in high school,” she said. According to Vos-Camy, by the time students got through 202, they would find themselves figuring out how to speak and having fun. “We had a lot better success attracting students into the major.”
Abraham Ceballos-Zapata, associate professor of Spanish and director of the teaching English to speakers of other languages program (TESOL), said that language professors have been fighting to keep languages prominent in the core. “If we want to have a global mission or look out into the world, we strongly believe that students need to learn languages when they go out. So we’re always advocating for that,” he said.
Pressure on languages
Professor Selles noted the pressure on faculty in the languages. “I think the past years have been very hard and all my colleagues have worked very, very hard to keep things going. So even as we saw that things were not going well, we tried our best through all different ways,” said Selles.
Faculty have battled general enrollment pressures and university prioritization of programs through successive rounds of cuts. “With the decline in enrollment, and … scarcity framework we’re working on right now, that has led to the current situation, that, in short, the university is not able and willing to support smaller programs,” said Selles.
De Vries continued that sentiment, “There have been choices made along the way to grant certain programs exemptions from languages. There are majors on campus [that require] 78 hours, 80 plus hours, 90 plus hours. … There’s just less room for second majors or for minors even. And so what’s going to happen? They’re going to disappear. That’s the story of world languages.”
De Vries saw Calvin as standing apart from the pack: “we used to be really the envy of Christian universities and colleges nationwide in terms of we had seven robust languages going on here.”
For History professor Frans Van Liere, he had hoped Calvin would continue to stand apart. “It’s not just at Calvin. This is part of a general trend. And for a long time, my hope was that Calvin would be countercultural in that respect. But I think that there too, the numbers were just overwhelming in the disadvantage of the languages … so it was hard to buck the trend.”
Vos-Camy pointed to pressure that came from a misunderstanding of the purpose of the language departments. “When I started … I got this sense that people considered languages just places where people went to conjugate verbs and that was it … So there was no respect. There was no understanding that we had a PhD in literature, not in conjugating verbs. And we were doing legitimate research, just like the English professors, but in another language. So for years, I felt like I was just fighting for respect. And then it was fighting for survival,” said Vos-Camy.
The importance of languages
Frans Van Liere, professor of history and director of the classical and medieval studies program, has intermittently taught courses in Latin since the program was cut, and stressed the importance of prioritizing programs like Classics and languages. “[The cuts were] going purely by student numbers. We always have argued that for certain subjects, you should not look at student numbers, but you should look at the added value of the program for the college as a whole,” he said. “You’re never going to have dozens and dozens of students do classical language, but I do think that it is important to have a classical languages department and have classical languages taught simply for the fact that they contribute to the overall quality of the institution as a liberal arts institution.”
Van Liere noted that the cuts come alongside Calvin continuing to market itself as a liberal arts university. “I think that’s the sad irony behind the big emphasis on liberal arts education is that the current administration of the college wants to reemphasize and say, ‘we are a liberal arts institution, and let’s market us as a liberal arts institution,’” he said. “There is a certain cognitive dissonance between that and the slow erosion that I have seen in what I think is one of the pillars of a liberal arts education, namely classical languages and languages in general. … So if they really want to emphasize … liberal arts education at Calvin, that will need to come with a firmer commitment to support the languages and classics.”
Ceballos-Zapata also emphasized the importance of languages in being a globally-minded institution. “You cannot say we care about the world, but they have to talk to me in English,” he said. “I think there’s something about being able to hear and listen to people in their own voice that cannot be replaced.” Ceballos noted that we don’t even have to travel to experience other languages. “The world is here, too. We have neighbors and immigrants and people who live here and live in different languages. … If we want to say that we welcome our neighbors and we are hospitable to other people … learning the language of other people is one step towards hospitality.”
Study abroad programs
Vos-Camy led the first French semester abroad program in 2001, saying, “From my perspective, that semester program is where … the French program really started blossoming.” For Vos-Camy the program was uniquely beneficial for both professors and students, raising the skill level in the classroom with each successive year. “It was great for the professors. It was great for us to spend time there. Our language skills got better, our enthusiasm … and the students got better because they would go abroad, then they would come back and be in classes with students who had not yet been abroad, which brought up the level. Those students would then go abroad with a little higher level than had previously gone abroad, [and] come back with a higher level,” said Vos-Camy.
Selles echoed the same sentiment, lamenting that “unfortunately for French and German, that’s no longer going to be a possibility. However, it will continue for Spanish, so I can foresee, and I hope, for a strong sense of community among students studying Spanish, whether they go for a January intensive or for a semester in Peru, Honduras or Spain,” said Selles.
Vos-Camy added that for students who are motivated, they can still study abroad, even if it involves unenrolling and reenrolling from Calvin, like she had to do as an undergraduate student. “You won’t have many students going abroad because it’s more difficult,” said Vos Camy.
Hopes for the future
Professor Selles, who will be leaving Calvin at the end of 2026 as part of reductions announced last fall, maintains hope for what remains of the World Languages department. “I would hope that we could continue and help the Spanish program to grow. And if we’re only going to focus on one major or minor in a language, well then give it resources, you know, make it a strong program … at all levels, whether in faculty and budget, departmental budget. … And then also support the languages that remain at the core level. And that also means that whoever’s chair has the resources to support and hire strong instructors and that those instructors get support too, support from the university to feel that they are valued for what they do,” said Selles.
Van Liere emphasized the importance of maintaining even small programs as prospects for future viability and reinvestment. “It’s really, really hard to get programs back once you cut them. In my experience, it’s easier to revive something for which there is still a little fledgling there,” said Van Liere.
For Vos-Camy, also leaving Calvin at the end of 2026, her hope remains in the future.“Somebody could rebuild it someday, the story is not over … our piece, our chapter is over, but the story is not over,” said Vos-Camy. She continued, “Things might turn around, they might find better financial stability, then they might start adding back humanities … at some point there might be a little spark and it might take off again. Who knows? I don’t know.”
