I begin with some local history. the first modern foreign language proposed for inclusion in Yale College was French. In 1778, the chevalier de la Luzerne, French minister plenipotentiary to the American colonies during the Revolutionary Wars, offered “to found a professorship at New-Haven College, the object of which was to be to teach the French language, and the history of France.” This was a moment of relative enlightenment at Yale—during the presidency of Ezra Stiles, a remarkable polymath, a great Hebraist who was also an astronomer and experimental scientist, and indeed taught all the subjects in the curriculum, and who welcomed the proposed addition of French. But enlightenment did not stretch so far. “The trustees of this college refused the generous offer, alleging that such an establishment would tend to introduce popery into the state” (Nancrède 10). Despite student demand, the trustees did not relent until 1825: French and then German became required subjects of study (though no professorship in French existed until the 1860s).