Further, the administrations leeway was limited. They can't just offer whatever pay they want for the jobs they care to offer them to however they may want to. There are pay schedules. It's a bureaucracy.

To be contrarian I think it's worth pointing out that the opportunities for native speakers of English who achieve fluency in Arabic are pretty limited. There are plenty of Arabic native speakers who speak English in competition with them.

And there aren't vast business opportunities. The total GDP of the MENA is something like that of Spain's.

I wanted to learn Arabic because I like languages, find them fun to learn, and think that knowing another of the great languages of the world would contribute to my understanding of human beings. I didn't think it would be a great credential.

These are structural problems within a bureaucracy, not with a policy. State, among the more unsympathetic agencies toward Bush policies by the way, has been trying to deal with the problem of long lead times for language training, rapidly changing demand, inconsistent ability to bring in new officers, a short-sighted Congress, and most of all tight budgets crossed with growing demand for new services for a very long time.

The dismissal or rejection of gay interpretors is its own issue, though I note that this has not been an issue at State.

Indeed, I believe the state department at least mode overtures towards hiring some of the dismissed DIA translators.

The point is that throughout government, Arabic speakers are rare because they are undervalued or run out for silly reasons.

I'm sure there are problems paying certain language speakers more than others. On the other hand, real leadership would deal with the issue.

These language bonuses only apply while the officer is abroad, in a position that requires the daily use of the language.

Unfortunately, that doesn't really encourage the attainment/maintenance of the skills outside of those positions and, I suspect, tends to 'career-track' those that are skilled. The military (at least the AF) has recently started trying to evaluate & offer incentives to people with certain language skills, regardless of position, which I think is a much better (tho, of course, more expensive) way to manage the skill pool...

State does pay bonuses for competence in hard languages, at least for officers in 'language designated positions'. These range from 5% of base salary for R-3/S-3 competence to 10% for R-4/S-4 competence. These language bonuses only apply while the officer is abroad, in a position that requires the daily use of the language.

Other federal agencies have slightly different rules. There's an informative USG website, Foreign Languages Jobs in the Federal Government, that's worth a look, though it's not detailed at all.

There are equity, structural, and bureaucratic problems in paying speakers of one language more than speakers of another.

Individual Saudis, like Pr. Al-Waleed bin Talal, have given large donations to both Harvard and Georgetown for the expansion of their existing Middle East Studies programs. Those donations, $10 million each, did not come with strings attached by Al-Waleed. Whether the universities decide to tack with particular winds is another matter.

But we're not -- I suspect b/c we fear that LIBERAL PROFESSORS would infiltrate same.

So, IIRC, the biggest gov't investor in Arabic departments in the U.S. is ... Saudi Arabia. TNR had an article years ago on how they fund Wahabist-friendly scholarship and squelch what they find unattractive.

I can't speak to the motivations of the university for excluding you from its Arabic program, but I'd definitely look at the financial aspects for a non-malicious reason.

I thought that, since I had already studied French, Latin, Greek, Russian, and Chinese and had gained some facility with all of them that I might be allowed take Arabic, too. I was turned down. I've never known the reason—I suspect that they just wanted to keep it the province of linguistics graduates.

My point is that there are reasons other than difficulty for the small number of American Arabic speakers. There's also a gatekeeper function in place and, in whatever numbers, it contributes as well.