To: Provost Maryanne Reed, President Gordon Gee, and the Board of Governors,
West Virginia University

We, the undersigned faculty of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, write with the deepest concern about the recommendation to close the Department of World Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics. If acted upon, this will have the effect of depriving future students at WVU of a fundamental educational opportunity, the ability to experience the world using a language other than English. This will not only diminish their ability to understand the broader world, but it will also diminish their future career prospects. Furthermore, the loss of Linguistics at WVU will mean the loss of an important bridge from the Humanities to STEM. We note that just one day after this possible cut was announced, an announcement of a major NSF grant to two of your Linguistics faculty members, Jonah Katz and Sergio Robles-Puente, appeared in the WVU College of Arts and Sciences News and Events.

We understand that you are in a financial crisis, but we urge you to seek alternative ways of dealing with it. It is hard to imagine that WVU will be able to recover if it abandons this core part of its mission, both in terms of its ability to recruit students, and in terms of its reputation as the flagship public university of West Virginia.

Faruk Akkus, Assistant Professor

Ana Arregui, Professor

Michael Becker, Associate Professor

Rajesh Bhatt, Professor

María Biezma, Assistant Professor

Seth Cable, Professor

Lyn Frazier, Professor Emerita

Lisa Green, Distinguished University Professor

Alice Harris, Professor Emerita

Vincent Homer, Associate Professor

Gaja Jarosz, Professor

Kyle Johnson, Professor

John Kingston, Professor

Angelika Kratzer, Profesor Emerita

John McCarthy, Distinguished University Professor Emeritus and Provost Emeritus

Shota Momma, Professor

Barbara Partee, Professor Emerita

Joe Pater, Professor and Department Chair

Thomas Roeper, Professor

Elisabeth Selkirk, Professor Emerita

Margaret Speas, Professor Emerita

Kristine Yu, Associate Professor