Regional research is an interdisciplinary study targeting region-specific knowledge and is threatened in the United States. Some regional research plans are facing immediate demolition of the red state legislature. In private universities or blue states, others are more likely to pass dozens of small cuts, which may make them untenable. Although most regional research programs are small, their losses can be spread across a variety of disciplines, teaching, research and academic poverty in the humanities and social sciences.
Most contemporary regional research departments were developed and funded during the Cold War, partly to meet U.S. national security needs. However, from the outset, regional research plans have gone far beyond policy issues. They should be preserved, not (just) for the national interest, but because they are crucial to our modern universities. Regional research aligns our understanding of historical drivers, the great sources of literature, and the origins and use of science, allowing scholars to challenge the normative narrative of “Western”.
With the second Trump administration’s support for federal government’s regional research, some scholars came to the field’s defense from the perspective of U.S. security and national interests. They have pointed out that cutting government funding for foreign-speaking regional research (FLAS) scholarships will be linguistically and intellectually poor decision makers. However, in the current political landscape, the Trump administration has little interest in maintaining the trap of soft power in the United States, and it seems unlikely that the federal government will restore funding for language education and development of specific regional knowledge. Their ability to contribute to the U.S. soft power will not save regional research.
The future of regional research goes beyond national security and policy interests, but is the core mission of our university. If we are to save on regional research, we must acknowledge and celebrate – the benefits of regional research are never the national interest of the United States. In fact, regional research decisively shapes how to practice scholarships and education on American college campuses.
Since the 1950s, the Regional Research Program has quietly mastered the discipline practices of the humanities and social sciences, and has changed education even for students who have never taken courses offered by formal Regional Research Departments. In part, this is because scholars educated through regional research programs are taught in history, anthropology, political science, religious studies, and other programs that require a depth of language and regional knowledge. These scholars introduce global, regional and non-Western knowledge to students at universities that may not have their own regional research program, but rely on the cultivation of regional knowledge at institutions that invest and accept the regional research model. Some of these scholars regard field research as their main research area. In other cases, including my own, they have a Ph.D. In other disciplines, research cannot be conducted without access to the language and specific courses offered by their university regional research program.
The impact of regional research goes beyond the direct impact on scholars and their students. Regional research scholars insist that there is much more to learn in the Middle East, Latin American or Sub-Saharan African literature, history and culture, as is the same as the Western European or modern North American English tradition. Best of all, regional research reminds us that these forms or traditions of knowledge do not exist, without “pure” or untouched civilizations, whether violent or peaceful or peaceful, thoughts and practices always radiate and shape each other. Of course, many scholars have known and studied these realities before the advent of contemporary regional research models. Nevertheless, since the 1950s, many regional studies of famous American universities have quietly but certainly estimated historical academic exclusions and helped internationalize American campus communities.
Federal and state cuts and institutional austerity are now reshaping college departments and programs in many disciplines. However, regional research programs are particularly at risk, in part because they are excluded from certain calls to defend humanities or liberal arts that have older, regional research perspectives about our shared cultural and historical knowledge. What is even more difficult is that the far right desires to claim and weaponize the humanities for themselves. Its vision for the humanities and the broader liberal arts not only rejects regional research, but also seeks to revoke key approaches to European and English literature and history. The ultimate right, depicting the humanities in the civilized terms of victoryism, imagines a fallacy of pure Western (white) tradition, justifying contemporary forms of domination and exclusion.
Scholars with more and more interest from the far right are fighting these imaginary reactionary history. But those of us (and areas that are rich in research by the region) can also play a role. We must refuse to recognize human history, literature, culture and politics narratives that expound on the experiences and contributions of non-European, non-good or non-white individuals and communities.
The most extreme threats to regional research, such as many to the humanities and social sciences, come from the hostile red state legislature. I completed a regional study at the Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University, which hosts languages such as Mongolians, Kurds and Ugles, which are rarely taught at other institutions in North America. Like many other prideful regional studies degree in Indiana (and many other programs), the program is currently suspended to “teach toward elimination teaching.”
Yet even institutions that seem to be eliminated from this direct political pressure seem to be expected to reduce their participation in regional research. I am now an assistant professor of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, a program that produces famous South Asian scholars worldwide and provides languages ranging from Tibetan to Tamil. The university proposes to reduce the number of departments within its arts and humanities departments and limit language courses that do not often attract a large number of students. These policies may lead to significant cuts to my own relatively small regional research programs. None of these suggestions are unique. Whether it is rapid or slow, universities across the country are withdrawing their commitment to regional research, especially in non-Western languages.
As academics, we can take some actions to ensure our working lifespan. When we revel in the complexity of the areas we choose to study, sometimes we forget how strange they are to many American undergraduates. However, unfamiliarity does not mean that it is unavailable. this Shahnameh or Maab Bharata Many of our students may not be familiar with each other iliad and Odysseybut there is no reason to lower access. Studies on modern sub-Saharan African history or Southeast Asian languages are essentially more profound than studies on modern North American history or Western European languages. Our goal must be to welcome students into topics that seem unfamiliar and share their joy as once strangers gradually become part of their knowledge body.
Likewise, one of the most important challenges from the foundations of the Cold War is that the discipline is often in the mid-20th century, with the United States-centered understanding of global political fault lines and cultural boundaries associated with nation-states. As many scholars have shown, these boundaries do not always reflect how people experience and understand their culture and history. However, scholars in regional studies are increasingly adept at these boundaries. Many of us use the framework of regional studies to challenge the understanding of regional boundaries as nature, identifying the hypothetical forms of fluidity and connectivity established on modern lines on modern maps.
Even if we make regional research more accessible and reflect on the trans cultural world, regional research programs will never be a money-maker for American universities. As novelist Lydia Kiesling is a beneficiary of regional research, especially FLAS funded persons, time“The market will never determine the class in Uzbekistan is a worthy claim, or it is important for K-12 teachers in cash-strapped areas to attend free workshops on world history.” Therefore, in the absence of federal funding for these programs, any defense of regional research must boil down to inquiries-begging! Our universities have surpassed financial motivations that seem to have surpassed their educational tasks.
Ultimately, regional research enables us to embrace, even revel in cultural, social and linguistic particularities and particularities, and to recognize our shared humanity by understanding these differences. Best of all, regional research programs help students and publicly demolish cultural hierarchies by understanding non-Western traditions with depth and heterogeneity equal to their European and English counterparts. In our current moment, the seemingly small corner of the American intellectual universe seems to be futile as the right-wing legislature destroys a series of dazzling college courses or is threatened by radical institutional austerity. Yet, in an era where governments in the United States and abroad seem to appear narrow and exclusive nationalist interests, in our universities, areas of research centered on our shared global history and culture need more than ever.
