Save Yiddish at Harvard!

Update: It appears Harvard intends to convert Preceptor (like the current Yiddish instructor) into 3-year positions, with continued employment contingent upon having impossibly high enrollment for a small language. This would punish endangered languages for being endangered and, in the case of Yiddish, having been genocided.

Dear friends and community,

We are concerned Jewish community members, and need your help to fight for the future of Yiddish language and culture. Harvard’s Yiddish program is under threat, and we need our communities and anyone interested in Yiddish to send this letter demanding that the University change course.

With Harvard’s policy of arbitrary term limits or “time caps,” it has cycled through Yiddish instructors for decades and forced them out when they hit their stride, repeatedly destroying the small program along with them. Its Yiddish students periodically endure a full reboot of the program they have come to love and rely on. Harvard shockingly denied tenure to its only Yiddish literature professor last year, and now its “time caps” will force out its two remaining Yiddish faculty: its only Yiddish instructor, and its only Holocaust historian.

The recently formed Harvard Academic Workers union has been attempting to negotiate a fair contract and an immediate end to time caps, but the University has chosen instead to stall negotiations, impose austerity, and cut programs. Harvard refused every opportunity to fix these problems before they culminated in the current crisis for Yiddish.

This is part of a broader trend in higher education to impose austerity and dismantle programs under the guise of surviving “trying times,” and we must object and say that this is destruction, not survival. If Harvard, the richest university in the world, cannot support Yiddish and other small fields, who will?

We must stand up for our friends and colleagues in Yiddish and in every other endangered language, culture, and program at Harvard and across higher education.

Please join us in sending our objections to Harvard’s President, Provost, and Deans. Share this campaign as widely as possible in your networks, synagogues, and schools. We hope that every single person concerned about Yiddish and Jewish culture will see this and speak up for ours and every community that is affected.

Step 1: Send E-Mail

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To the Harvard Administration,

As a member of the Jewish community, I am alarmed to learn of Harvard’s time cap policy and reductions to non-tenure-track workforce, which threaten curriculum including its Yiddish program, one of few in the world teaching our endangered language. I urge you to immediately suspend time caps, accelerate good faith negotiations with the Harvard Academic Workers, and renew current faculty appointments for next year, including those affected by time caps.

President Garber recently made the shocking decision to deny tenure to Harvard's Yiddish literature professor, despite widely recognized contributions to scholarship and teaching in Yiddish Studies and Jewish Studies. The sole remaining Yiddish instructor, Dr. Sara Feldman, will time out at the end of this year if Harvard does not allow Feldman’s appointment to be renewed. Dr. Feldman’s ouster will effectively decimate Harvard’s Yiddish program, built up over the past seven years. Harvard’s other remaining Yiddishist, Holocaust historian and beloved History and Literature lecturer Dr. Jules Riegel, is also slated to time out this year. Harvard will be left with no continuing Yiddishist and without a Holocaust historian at this crucial moment for understanding the history of antisemitism and genocide. Seeing these Yiddishists fired at Harvard for no good reason indicates that your institution does not value my Jewish culture and would prefer to actively suppress and insult it.

Jews recognize Harvard’s antisemitic past, including quotas from the 1930s to ‘60s and legacy admissions tactics. We see Harvard’s continued suppression of Yiddish Studies as an active decision to continue its historical antisemitism.

The loss of Harvard’s renowned Yiddish program would signal to the world and other universities that Yiddish is not important, serious, or worthy of study, degrading the status of my ancestral language in other institutions as they impose austerity measures. Harvard’s Yiddish program has contributed to the greater Boston Jewish community, and its alumni are leaders in the preservation and revitalization of Yiddish culture worldwide. Harvard’s students and the entire community have grown to rely on Harvard’s outstanding Yiddish program and faculty, and deserve better than to have it pulled out from under them. I would like to see Harvard exercise its leadership by supporting, rather than threatening, Yiddish Studies.

In an alarming precedent, Harvard has recently dramatically reduced Armenian Studies by allowing Modern Armenian instructor Dr. Lisa Gulesserian to time out months after awarding her the Joseph R. Levenson Memorial Teaching Prize for “superb teaching by members of the Harvard faculties.” Dr. Gulesserian also won the National Less Commonly Taught Languages Resource Center’s Innovation in Language Teaching Award in 2024. My concern for my own culture’s representation compels me to speak up for all other students, programs, and communities affected by time caps and austerity.

Ongoing negotiations with the Harvard Academic Workers provide Harvard an opportunity to right past wrongs and to secure the future of Yiddish Studies and other programs. The union has garnered support on campus, with The Crimson recently coming out in favor of completely abolishing time caps. Skewering the University for its inaction, The Crimson affirmed the importance of supporting Harvard’s teaching faculty, the need to protect its programs, and the role that a strong union must play in upholding Harvard’s integrity in these trying times.

I would like to support Harvard’s struggle against government overreach and suppression, but how can I when you refuse to take up the fight — and instead decimate your academic programs and workforce, including Yiddish? Suspend the time caps policy immediately, renew the appointments of all existing faculty, and accelerate good faith negotiations with the Harvard Academic Workers in order to preserve strong programs in Yiddish and other fields.

Sincerely,

Save Yiddish at Harvard and Support the Union!

Step 1: Send E-Mail

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