To: Members of the Ad Hoc Curriculum Review Committee

I am unable to attend today's meeting with the Ad Hoc Curriculum Committee, but I would like to submit my comments for consideration. I am concerned with the virtual absence in curriculum proposals of Central Europe and its peoples. Some twenty million Americans are of Central and East Central European ancestry. Central Europe has played a key role in the dissolution of the longest-lasting totalitarian regime in recent history (surely the most important political development since World War II). It would seem appropriate that the Solidarity mass movement and the fall of the Berlin Wall be prominently featured in the revised core courses. To that effect, books such as Zbigniew Brzezinski's The GRand Failure might be considered, as well as portions of Norman Davies' Europe: A History (1996).

As things stand now, the history of 200 million people in Central and East Central Europe has been invisible in the curriculum save for a racist and mendacious Mouse by Spiegelman. That such books are on the recommended list for the HUMA 102 course is another indication that the discourse on Central Europe needs correction. While attempts have been made by the Committee and by HUMA 101-102 to replace or supplement the colonialist discourse about non-European peoples by native discourses, such attempts have not been made in regard to Central Europe.

Should the Committee wish to discuss these matters further, I shall be happy to oblige.