Cornell: A Global Leader in Sri Lanka Studies

Located in the rural and picturesque Finger Lakes Region of New York State in the U. S., Cornell University seems an unlikely site for an academic centre focused on the study of historical and contemporary Sri Lanka.

Yet one unique feature of this Ivy League university often overlooked is that it is the only institution outside of Sri Lanka to offer a full curriculum for the study of Sinhala.

What is the return on investment? Support of Cornell’s Sinhala language program contributes to the future of Sri Lanka and our wider world in many ways. Language study enables postgraduate students (including but not limited to students of Sri Lankan heritage) to undertake substantial studies of historical and contemporary Sri Lanka

Moreover, Cornellians have the opportunity to study Tamil, plus Sanskrit and Pali, all languages central to Sri Lanka’s rich literary and ritual histories. This emphasis on the languages of Sri Lanka has ensured a solid foundation for Cornell’s ongoing scholarship and applied research at the global heart of Sri Lanka Studies. Cornell’s involvement with Sri Lanka has a deep history, dating back to the 1960s and 1970s when Cornell dons and

Ipost-graduate students began to take an active interest in Sri Lanka’s languages, literatures, agriculture and water management, architecture and anthropology.

From those days till now, Sri Lanka has been central to the University’s teaching and research missions. Cornell sends Sinhala language courses via video-conference to other U.S. universities, while Cornell students access Tamil language classes from Columbia University by video-conference, thanks to a Mellon Foundationfunded collaboration. The Cornell South Asia Program remains the leading publisher of textbooks for the study of Sinhala, and the University maintains the chief U.S. library collection related to Sri Lanka. Each year, the Cornell South Asia Program hosts distinguished visitors from Sri Lanka, who offer lectures, courses, and performances at the University. Cornell scholars working on Sri Lanka also maintain close ties with major Sri Lankan universities and research centers on the island.

However, dark clouds loom on the horizon, threatening Cornell’s strengths in Sri Lanka Studies.

The University’s Sinhala language program is now at risk. Due to changing governmental priorities, t is with good intention that we want our kids to succeed in academics and have a secure future. Therefore parents start planning the career of their child from a very young age. Gone now are the days where a child could afford leisure. We don’t see children flying there may be little or no access to U.S. government grants that have historically provided selected universities with partial support for language teaching. Severely compounding this threat, Cornell University’s changing budgetary policy has reduced support for the Less Commonly Taught Languages, including Sinhala. Cornell University’s unique full-time Sinhala language program may cease by July 2018.

The Cornell South Asia Program leads the campaign to save the University’s full-time Sinhala language program, using two linked strategies. First, capitalizing on new teaching technology, the South Asia Program aims to increase student enrollments in Cornell’s Sinhala courses, by expanding video-conferenced classroom access to the language for students from other universities in the U.S. This publicly affirms the Sinhala curriculum’s value and may thus help deflect University budget cuts. The second and most critical strategy aims to generate partial running costs from external funders in the short-term, and to endow the Sinhala Senior Lecturer position in the middleterm. Only substantial external funding will secure the Cornell Sinhala language curriculum for kites, playing cricket, riding a bicycle or even dancing in the rain. It will be unjust of me to proclaim that a child needs leisure, so please do give them the freedom. But what I can do is, help you out with a small analysis.

Put yourself in these shoes. You don’t know a current and future generations.

What is the return on investment? Support of Cornell’s Sinhala language program contributes to the future of Sri Lanka and our wider world in many ways. Language study enables post-graduate students (including but not limited to students of Sri Lankan heritage) to undertake substantial studies of historical and contemporary Sri Lanka. This helps develop an international community of scholars conversant in Sinhala, better able to work with colleagues in Sri Lanka on a host of issues, including social and economic development, Indian Ocean security, and environmental thing in this world; you are being told that you need to work hard to achieve your goal; the goal mind you is not even yours. So you work towards the goal, with the least amount of leisure. How long do you think you could go on? Well, you would have to go on for about 20 years. If you thought of a lesser period than that, trust me you don’t even know what that person is going through. This is a prototype of what a child would go through until one day he/she get a job. Oh and now you think the game is over? Sorry to burst that bubble because once you get a job, all you can do is keep working until you earn enough to survive.

We all have this big imaginary bubble where we think we will do a great job, earn so well and “buy” the leisure we want. It is now time to step in to the light, when you’re a child you’re goal driven by your parents, when you’re a youth you are income driven, and when you come to that age of almost dying you get the leisure you’ve always wanted throughout your life. Let me destroy that façade as well, when you’re in that old age of you may live the next day or you won’t you’re very weak that you won’t be able to go on that hike you always wanted to. Let alone that you may not even be able to withstand long distance travelling.

The analysis fits perfectly well in to most of our lives. Loosen those reins you’ve tied around your children, they need to experience the bliss of life. Being able to dance in the rain will liberate that child, it will teach them how to enjoy the simple pleasures in life. Let them run around the neighborhood yelling ‘ May Day’, it will be hilarious to even watch them having the time of their life.

It is a massive arena where champions fight each other, all just to please the onlookers. Why spend effort and preservation. Scholars of literary Sinhala trained by Cornell’s Senior Lecturer in Sinhala help deepen our understanding of the island’s religious, literary, and cultural heritage.

This is urgently needed, especially since so few students now pursue these areas in advanced post-graduate courses within Sri Lanka. Young people from the Sri Lankan diaspora are often eager to help build the future of Sri Lanka. Yet without training in Sinhala and Tamil languages they cannot function effectively, whether among their relatives on the island or in many wider social and professional settings.

Maintaining foundational language programs at Cornell University helps the younger generations abroad reconnect to Sri Lanka at a pivotal time in the island’s history. Sri Lanka-related endowed programs at Cornell University are also symbolically important, underscoring the significance of Sri Lanka to the United States and within our rapidly changing global arena. Those interested in discussing the future of Cornell’s Sinhala language program should please contact Prof. Anne M. Blackburn, Director, Cornell South Asia Program <amb242@cornell.edu>. time, wasting our energy and age to please everyone else other than ourselves?

Many of us don’t even have the time to read the papers while sipping a cup of tea. How many times this week have you seen the sunset? The oranges and violets mixed with the blue hues, looks like a painting. Is it fair that we take away the simple pleasure and beauty in life from a child at a young age?

By all means guide your little kid. Show them what is right and wrong. Tell them that they need to one day choose a lifestyle to earn a living. Yes, you read that right. Choose a lifestyle to earn. Teach them the importance of understanding what makes them excited and happy, and lead them to the path where they make the best out of their career and life.

Wealth is only a part of happiness; the other part of happiness is created by selfsatisfaction, love, confidence, dreams, goals, friendships, kindness, empathy. You see, by choosing a lifestyle you will be choosing the right amounts of all these factors to enrich your life. The right amount of money and the right amount of all the goodness in the world.

It’s a developing world, we are a developing country. Now what needs to be developed is our attitude on life. How we take on the world. Give the correct dosage of happiness to your child, and teach them to take the dosage every day. When you guide them with the blissful mindset, whatever storm may come they will withstand knowing how to enjoy simple pleasures in life.

Now go join them and dance in the rain.

Devuni Goonewardene