Tibetan language courses to stop at University of Bern

A Tibetan boy at a rally in front of the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva in 2016. Keystone / Salvatore Di Nolfi

The University of Bern is currently the only Swiss university where Tibetan language courses can still be taken. These are to be discontinued from the autumn.

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The background to this is that the University of Bern will no longer continue the Central Asian Cultural Studies programme, which has been decided for some time. Tenzin Yundung, who has Tibetan roots and is currently completing her masters degree in Central Asian Cultural Studies in Bern, regrets this. “If I want to deal with Tibet and Tibetan issues at an academic level, I can no longer find any courses on offer,” she said.

This is also a sign that Tibetan culture is under threat in exile, she said. The language courses were also valuable for Tenzin Yundung because, as a third-generation Tibetan, it is difficult for her to cultivate the Tibetan language. “As children, we often attended Tibetan weekend schools, but they only taught the basics.”

Language courses at university level are therefore helpful in order to familiarise oneself more intensively with Tibetan, she said.

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No mandate

One of the largest exile communities of the Tibetan people lives in Switzerland. Switzerland is therefore an important place for the cultivation of the Tibetan language and culture. In future, this will have to take place outside the university environment.

According to the Secretary General of the University of Bern, Christoph Pappa, interest in Central Asian cultural studies was too low. As the language courses are part of the degree programme, they will now also be discontinued. In response to the fears of the Tibetan diaspora, he says: “Language training is definitely a contribution to a culture. But the University of Bern has no specific mandate to do so. We therefore need to consider how we can organise this differently.”

Nevertheless, the Swiss Tibet organisations are concerned. The decision to discontinue the language courses means de facto that studies on Tibet are no longer possible in Switzerland. They write this in an open letter and call on the University of Bern to maintain the language courses.

Translated from German by DeepL/ts