No Spooks, Please. We're Academics

By Jodie Morse

The best hope for finding and stopping Osama bin Laden, Donald Rumsfeld has said, is "a scrap of information." But it remains to be seen whether government officials would know how to translate that scrap. In the days following the attacks, the FBI appealed to speakers of Arabic and Afghan languages to sign up for its $27-to-$38-per-hour translator gigs. One reason for the shortage? The dearth of top-notch, well-funded Arabic departments at U.S. colleges.

In the past year, the Defense Department has been quietly working with Congress and universities to ease this language barrier. A solution gaining favor is the creation of ROTC-style language academies at several campuses across the country. In exchange for free instruction in Arabic and other languages key to intelligence gathering, students would be required to serve in national-security jobs.

But the idea hasn't been welcomed on all fronts. The University of Michigan declined an invitation last spring to participate in the fledgling Pentagon program. "We didn't want our students to be known as spies in training," says Carol Bardenstein, an assistant professor of Arabic language and culture at Michigan. "By intertwining intelligence and academics, we'd essentially be recruiting Arabs to later inform on members of their own community." The advocates of the program will pitch Michigan again next month. Perhaps Sept. 11 will bring a change of heart.

--By Jodie Morse