Harvard University to offer Tagalog language courses for the first time

The prestigious Harvard University in the U.S. will offer Tagalog language courses for the 2023-2024 school year.

The college newspaper, "The Harvard Crimson," reported the news, citing Tagalog as the fourth most spoken language in the United States.

This comes after Eleanor V. Wikstrom, co-president of the Harvard Philippine Forum and a Crimson Editorial chair, wrote an opinion article in the school paper, criticizing the lack of a Tagalog language course at Harvard.

She reportedly received pushback at the time on the value of learning Tagalog.

In "The Harvard Crimson" recent article, student John U. Ficek said a Tagalog class would “help out a lot” for Filipino students who grew up in the U.S. and don't know the language.

The school's Department of South Asian Studies will hire three instructors to teach Tagalog, as well as Thai and Bahasa Indonesian, which are already being at Harvard.

According to "The Harvard Crimson," the teaching positions will be on a three-year term per instructor, and are renewable for up to five additional years.

Meanwhile James Robson, a professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and director of the Harvard University Asia Center said they received the $1 million from the center’s budget to fund the Tagalog teaching position, but he said that funding the position after three years would be “probably not entirely sustainable.”

Harvard also currently does not have a Southeast Asian Studies department. For the 2022-2023 academic year, the university offered only one course on the Philippines, which was about the history of Southeast Asia in general. — Kimberly Tsao/LA, GMA Integrated News