Global geopolitics, migration, and language education in the United States

The decline of interest in teaching languages other than English (LOTEs) has long been lamented, alongside the permeation of neoliberal ideologies in the operation of higher education. For those working in the United States, the threat posed by legislators toward diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives—by holding state funding hostage—has also become all too familiar. Indeed, DEI is a prime target for the current administration's overhaul of federal agencies. Still, it is disheartening to read that the heroic efforts of West Virginia University (WVU) faculty and students to save world language programs yielded only minor adjustments to the predetermined, politically motivated course of action. The WVU leadership decided to allow a few languages to continue as electives, but dismantled the department, terminated all major programs, and eliminated the language requirement for all majors. As a matter of fact, within the last year, we have also received news that major universities in other Anglophone countries are making similar moves. The warning issued by Thompson et al. (2025, this issue), together with the latest developments within the nation and globally, raises a new sense of urgency. I begin my commentary by clarifying my positionality. For the past thirty-some years, I have experienced the changing political climate in the United States from the perspective of a foreign-born, noncitizen Asian language educator. I arrived in Wisconsin in the late 1980s by responding to a call for native-speaking interns announced by the state's Department of Public Instruction (DPI). Prompted by the rise of the Japanese economy and growing public interest in Japanese language education, the state took the unprecedented step of recruiting over 100 interns in 4 years to place in public schools. After completing my 1-year service, I remained in Wisconsin to earn a PhD in Japanese linguistics. I have since taught Japanese language and linguistics at two land-grant Research 1 universities in the upper Midwest. I also served as department chair twice at my current institution, the University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW–Madison): First orchestrating the teaching of three East Asian languages and literatures (2008–2011) and later overseeing the teaching of 12 Asian languages and cultures (2016–2017), following the merger of two departments that covered different regions of Asia. These experiences have shaped my perspectives on the relationship between politics and language education. From this standpoint, I would like to foreground another layer of context—global geopolitics—which intertwines with local, state, and federal politics in driving academic decisions. As Kramsch (2019, p. 50) reminded us, “no field of education has been subjected more frequently to the ebbs and flows of global geopolitics than foreign language (FL) education.” Hence, the crisis of LOTE education has been experienced differently by programs covering different languages associated with various world regions. The Modern Language Association (MLA) historical enrollment database from 1958 to 2016 indicates that several core European languages demonstrated a slow decline in enrollments, whereas growth in a cluster of East and South Asian, African, and Native American languages was notable (Karmanov, 2023). Given this trend, combined with the fact that I am affiliated with a state flagship university known for its international and regional studies, my experience may be perceived as the subject of envy. However, I would like to point out that the humanities departments on our campus also had to respond to deans’ warnings, framed as “change or be changed,” and undertake major departmental restructuring. In the meantime, I have helplessly observed the rapid deterioration of Japanese language education in the state's primary and secondary schools, in the launch of which I played a role. In the following three sections, I will share my observations of three different, but interrelated, manifestations of global geopolitics, borne out of my experiences. Recent scholarship in applied linguistics challenges the continued upholding of distinct named languages—the product of the colonial nation-building process—in favor of the recognition of translingual practices observed in everyday communicative acts (Li, 2018; Pennycook, 2019). Yet, educational institutions and professional organizations (such as MLA or American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages [ACTFL]) continue to use names of languages as labels for departments, programs, majors, and courses—“Department of French and Italian,” “German Program,” “Spanish major,” “First-Year Chinese,” “Intermediate Japanese,” and so forth. Faced with budgetary and operational constraints, institutions and school districts ponder which languages to offer, why, and how. For example, in the announcement of their final recommendations, the WVU administration stated, “instruction in Spanish (a high demand language) and Chinese (a critical need language) would be offered based upon student demand and instructional capacity” (WVU Today, 2023, para. 7)—and later added French and Arabic to the list, presumably under the respective categories. The descriptors such as “high demand” or “critical need” suggest that language selection is often justified based on rankings influenced by neoliberal and geopolitical considerations. ACTFL (2019), for instance, published the results of a survey conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs, a market research company, which ranks “in-demand” foreign languages reported by US employers in the following order: Spanish (first), Chinese (second), French (third), German, Japanese (tied for fourth), and so forth. Languages considered critical for the nation's security and economic prosperity have also been identified by various federal departments. The Department of State, for instance, runs the Critical Language Scholarship program and supports students studying Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Swahili, Turkish, and Urdu. The National Security Education Program (NSEP), housed within the Department of Defense, has supported the Language Flagship Programs in Arabic, Chinese, Korean, and Russian since 2002. Later, Persian and Portuguese were added to the list. The Department of Education's International and Foreign Language Education (IFLE) office, whose origin traces back to the National Defense Education Act of 1958 that passed in response to the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik in 1957, has also managed several programs to enhance US expertise in area studies, international studies, and less commonly taught languages. However, the current administration halted its operation in March 2025. UW–Madison's ability to continue offering a dozen Asian languages on a regular basis is largely supported by these federal programs, most notably the Title VI funding administered by IFLE. Title VI supports eight National Resource Centers (NRC) housed on our campus, including four covering different regions of Asia. It has also enabled the university to offer Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships to both graduate and undergraduate students. To secure the NRC funding, universities had to respond to the priorities set by the Department of Education, which emphasized not only the teaching of modern foreign languages but also instruction and research in diverse fields to provide a comprehensive understanding of world regions where these languages are spoken. Thus, to remain competitive for this funding, applicant universities had to demonstrate a sizable number of faculty specializing in specific world regions across various disciplines, as well as an administrative infrastructure capable of coordinating teaching, research, and outreach activities. However, federal funding is never guaranteed. The vulnerability of these grant-funded programs became strikingly clear in 2011, when a major plunge in Title VI funding (approximately 40% reduction) was announced. During this crisis, those in the most vulnerable positions were non-tenure-track, foreign-born, noncitizen instructors of less commonly taught languages, whose salaries depended on this “soft money.” Protecting these languages and the instructors who contribute to fulfilling US national interests became a critical issue for those of us in more secure positions. To this end, the departmental restructuring in the mid-2010s created the current structure, which brings together East, Southeast, and South Asian languages. The new department attempts to offer large-enrollment courses taught in English about Asia, alongside less commonly taught languages, to balance out overall enrollments. Course sharing with peer institutions, delivered through hybrid arrangements, have also been part of the strategy to sustain these programs. More recently, in 2024, the Department of Defense announced a major funding cut for the Language Flagship Programs, reducing the number of programs from 31 to 19. These federal budget cuts have had devastating impacts on the universities that were recipients of past awards. With the series of executive orders issued by the current president over the last 2 months and the proposed dissolution of the Department of Education, we anxiously await final word on federal funding for international education and the university leadership's direction on how to navigate this drastic change while maintaining our critical educational mission. In addition to US national interests, LOTE education also plays a central role in soft power diplomacy initiated by countries where the respective languages are spoken. In recent decades, there has been a notable surge in initiatives by East Asian countries, epitomized by phrases such as “Cool Japan” and the “Korean Wave.” For example, President Obama's expression of gratitude toward the official Japanese delegation for “all the things we love from Japan” (White House, 2015, para. 5), including manga, anime, and emojis, symbolizes the effect of such national branding efforts. According to the Japan Foundation (2023), “interest in anime, manga, J-POP, fashion, etc.” (p. 5) was the most frequently selected reason for studying Japanese among US respondents. However, the US reception of soft power diplomacy exercised by other countries varies, reflecting the dynamics of ongoing world affairs. Perhaps the most widely discussed case is the role of the Confucius Institutes of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Since 2004, tens of thousands of Chinese teachers have been sent worldwide for the promotion of Chinese language and culture. At its peak in 2017, there were 118 Confucius Institutes housed in US institutions of higher education, which also sponsored Confucius Classrooms in US primary and secondary schools (Lum & Fischer, 2023). Nevertheless, as relations between the PRC and the United States have deteriorated in recent years, the perception of Confucius Institutes as a threat to US national security has intensified. Since 2018, Congress has passed two laws restricting federal funding to institutions hosting a Confucius Institute. By 2023, the number of institutes had plummeted to just a handful. Meanwhile, the US Department of State and Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) held the inaugural US–Japan High Level Policy Dialogue on Education in October 2023 (U.S. Mission Japan, 2023). Among the topics covered were “the importance of enhancing Japanese and English language education, especially at the compulsory education level” and “Japanese language course availability and the decline in licensed Japanese teachers” (US Mission Japan, 2023, para. 7) in the United States. Six months later, a Memorandum of Cooperation was signed, with the aim of increasing the number of Japanese language teachers in the United States (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, 2024). These developments quickly circulated not only among Japanese language educators in the United States but also through major Japanese news outlets. For instance, a Nikkei article published on 12 April 2024 underscored the importance of Japanese language education in increasing the number of Japanophiles and attracting students trained in US universities known for cutting-edge research to Japan. These efforts highlight the vested interests of the Japanese government in maintaining the presence of Japanese language education in the United States, which remains its most indispensable ally. However, as discussed by Thompson et al. (2025, this issue), educational policy-making decisions in the United States are highly de-centralized, making it difficult to predict how such joint statements will impact decision-making at the state or school district levels. Ultimately, what matters most is the support programs can generate from the local community. Despite the current youth interest in Japanese pop culture, adult decision-makers are no longer as convinced of the instrumental value of Japanese language as they were three or four decades ago. The rise of English as a global lingua franca, the increased emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) and vocational education, and the reduced importance of LOTEs for university admission requirements have all altered priorities. The retirement of the first wave of teachers who started programs in the late 1980s to the early 1990s has often been seen as an opportunity for program closure. One recent success story in retaining a high school Japanese program occurred in a Wisconsin school district known for having a significant number of Hmong resettlers. The district administration's announcement of their plan to discontinue Japanese and Hmong in favor of continuing American Sign Language, French, German, and Spanish met with strong pushback from concerned citizens who wrote letters to the district administration and board of education and took a stand at the first board meeting after the announcement (Fuerstenberg, 2022, November 30). Among the 18 speakers was an Honorary Consul to Japan, who emphasized the significance of Japan as America's closest ally and largest foreign direct investor in his advocacy for the continuation of the Japanese program. In addition, many community members—current and former students, parents, and minority community leaders—underscored the significance of the Asian language programs as spaces for affirmation of their identity and roots. One of the Hmong community leaders mentioned that until the district started offering Hmong, many Hmong took Japanese. “Being represented even by an entirely different ethnicity is powerful, it is impactful,” she asserted.1 Within a week, the district administration announced the reversal of its decision (Fuerstenberg, 2022, December 9). Equity statements the board had established the year before became a pivotal reference point in this discussion, arguably more so than the US–Japan relationship. This program is now one of the few offering Japanese in the state, which once had more than 50 schools teaching the language. As alluded to in the previous sections, the state of LOTE education in the United States cannot be discussed without reference to global migration patterns, both in terms of teachers and students. Regarding the teacher population, “native speakers” are still highly valued and actively recruited, and the United States has been an attractive destination for resettlement for individuals from overseas (Kramsch, 2019). This tendency of foreign-born teachers to occupy language-teaching positions appears to have been especially pronounced in non-European languages. For instance, according to the Japan Foundation (2023), nearly 70% of Japanese teachers in North America are native speakers, while the percentage is only 17.7% globally. Global migration trends have also impacted the shift in student demographics seen in US classrooms. According to the Pew Research Center (Moslimani & Passel, 2024), the US foreign-born population reached a record high of 47.8 million in 2023, and among new immigrant arrivals, Asians outnumbered Hispanics during the 2010s. 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