Dear Professor Rabel,
On the internet I read about the UK Institute for Latin Studies. I want to congratulate you and your University on this wonderful curriculum, which is a milestone in university research and teaching.
It combines a strictly scholarly approach with an excellent training in the active use of the Latin language. By this unusual cooperation, the study of the language gains in seriousness thanks to the scholarly approach; whereas, vice versa, scholarship profits immediately from the increasing reading skill and interpretive insight obtained by practising active Latin. The latter practice, as taught in your Institute, has nothing to do with the well-known efforts of some dilettanti, but has a solid scholarly foundation. Moreover it answers a real need. As can be seen in many universities all over the world the ability to read Latin fluently is not particularly developed even among students of classics. In order to get an adequate idea of the importance of Latin as the basic language of our western culture, we need to read a great many texts, most of which have not been translated into English. Your program will enable students to fill their lacunas more quickly and efficiently and, what is more, to read even unknown Latin texts without difficulty.
I fervently support your project, which must be called a pilot project on a world-wide scale. The primary importance of this project is quite clear, and the excellent competence of your academic teachers - to give an example, prof. Tunberg has been honoured by the Italians with an Academy membership in Rome - is a guarantee for the extremely serious and scholarly character of your program. I definitely encourage you to go on with this program which ensures the University of Kentucky and the U.S. their traditional roles of innovation and pioneering. It is wonderful to see your university at the head of the evolution in an academic subject which is the basis of our culture.
With warmest wishes, Yours sincerely, Michael von Albrecht, Professor of Classics Seminar für Klassische Philologie der Universität Heidelberg 69117 Germany
Created on ... March 26, 2001