After 10 years of devoted service at UC Berkeley, it is time for me to go. I was offered a great job by Amazon to help lead their localization efforts for Kindle in Europe. It also means I will move temporarily to Cork, Ireland. I will miss teaching and being around the students at Cal: they were the reason I stayed this long. I have no doubt the Dutch program will survive without me although I have worried and worry about its legitimacy, grade inflation, the lowering of standards and the limited/cliché curriculum of the last few years. The lack of a hard-core culture class about the Netherlands, a class on water, a class on book history, a class on capitalism, a standard class on Dutch literature and great books, all these are missing from the program and students (especially from majors and minors) requests for these are ignored. It is a one mans program rather than a quality representation of what a Dutch Studies program should look like. The University, Berkeley, can do so much better... in my own limited way (lecturers are banned from faculty meetings) I did my best but my inability to make a change, propose innovative classes or improve overall climate no doubt played into my decision to leave. Vaarwel. I will miss you all.
Posted on: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 19:39:11 +0000
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