As dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs, I was most interested in the article about our undergraduate programs that appeared in your edition Thursday, March 26 (The GW Hatchet, “ESIA urged to extend curriculum,” p.1).

The opinions of the students interviewed in the article were very timely and most welcome. We have recently launched a thorough review of our undergraduate curriculum, which will be completed in the coming 1998-’99 academic year. Thus, I was extremely pleased to see further evidence of student interest in concentrations in South Asian studies and cross-cultural relations. This information will be of great help to our faculty as they conduct the undergraduate program review.

Unfortunately, however, some of the characterizations of our program contained in your article were not entirely accurate. For example, it’s not true that South Asia is “excluded from the schedule of classes.” Two of our Elliott School faculty, Barbara Miller and Sanjay Jain, are specialists on that region. The University offers a number of courses on the religion and literature of South Asia. And we also make it possible for interested students to construct their own concentration in South Asian studies, using courses offered by other universities in the Consortium.

Nonetheless, it is true that we do not offer enough courses here at GW, outside the humanities, to enable us to support our own concentration in South Asian studies. On the assumption that a significant number of students wish to do so, I am trying to secure external funding to make this possible, and have already had preliminary discussions with one major foundation.

Second, although we have dropped our concentration in international communication, this is not because we want to “scale down” our programs. Rather, it was because we concluded that the courses included in this specialization were not sufficiently international in orientation to constitute an appropriate field of concentration in the Elliott School. We felt that students interested in that particular cluster of courses would be better advised to seek a secondary field of study in journalism or in radio and television.

In place of the specialization in international communication, we are exploring the establishment of a new concentration in cross-cultural issues. An initial step in this direction is the creation of a new course on the subject, as part of the residential program in Fulbright Hall for first-year students, which will be taught by a new full-time faculty member joining the University next year.

I personally believe that cross-cultural relations are as important a part of international affairs as international politics or international economics, and hope that this new concentration can be created through the review of the undergraduate curriculum now underway.

Finally, perhaps the most inaccurate characterization of all was that the Elliott School’s curriculum is focused primarily on Europe. This misperception may reflect the fact that the core curriculum for majors in International Affairs does require two history courses, one of which is on European history. However there are other requirements too: a course on American diplomatic history and two courses on non-Western cultures.

Moreover, Elliott School students can select regional specializations, or even major, in East Asian, Latin American and Middle Eastern Studies. The overwhelming majority of our faculty with regional specializations are non-Europeanists. Thus, I don’t think it’s fair to conclude that the Elliott School has a bias toward Europe.

But my main point here is not to correct the mistakes in the article, but to emphasize that we welcome student input in the curriculum review now underway. One way we receive this input is through our regular town meetings, held each semester, at which some of my senior colleagues and I meet with any students who wish to attend. It was at last semester’s meeting that I heard of growing student interest in South Asian studies, Korean studies, and cross-cultural relations, and we have been working hard ever since to try to incorporate those subjects more fully in the curriculum.

The next of those meetings, sponsored by the International Affairs Society, will be Tuesday evening, April 21. I encourage all interested Elliott School students to attend. -The writer is dean of the Elliott School and professor of international affairs and political science.