To the Editor:
I take umbrage with the stride in which you address the plight of U.S. professors in Korea (“In South Korea, Foreign Professors Can Have a Hard Time Fitting In,” The Chronicle, January 7). While the reader certainly sympathizes, given that foreign and minority professors can have just as hard a time fitting in here in the U.S., The Chronicle’s coverage reveals an observable bias.
While I was born in New York, many of the foreign faculty members I know in the U.S. are expected to adopt cultural practices which may be unfamiliar, to gain proficiency in English, and to withstand cultural isolation. I have personally received abusive and biased comments from students and faculty members that have the effect of making one feel unwelcome. I suspect that is the case for many foreign and minority faculty members. Yet you attack the treatment of foreign professors in Korea with disproportionate zeal.
Many universities in the U.S. recruit foreign and minority talent, but then treat those individuals in much the same way as this article so boldly accuses Korea University of doing—recruiting an internationalized and diverse faculty with less regard to support, retention, and remuneration vis-à-vis the institutional value we provide. As a result, U.S. universities may unwittingly be making foreign and minority faculty members feel undervalued.
I appreciate your international coverage and I believe your reporters can conduct their reporting in a more informed manner. It would be wonderful to direct the same vigor contained in this article towards investigating the quandaries faced by foreign and minority pioneers in our own faculties of higher education.
Louis Edgar Esparza
Assistant Professor of Sociology and Latin American Studies
California State University at Los Angeles
Los Angeles