The fight for the preservation of Modern Greek at tertiary level has suffered another major setback as Macquarie University announces its intention to discontinue Modern Greek from next year.

Modern Greek Studies at Macquarie University has gone through many struggles, the most recent one coming three years ago when Modern Greek was demoted from being a major to a minor before returning as a major in 2022.

This recent proposal, however, presents a more permanent change as part of a radical shift in the University’s direction with language studies.

The announcement of this decision from the Macquarie Greek Studies Foundation revealed that a whole list of languages is being discussed for discontinuation, including Modern Greek, Croatian, German, Italian and Russian.

This is in line with their proposal to move away from the discipline of Languages and Cultures and instead establish a Discipline of Global Studies.

The Foundation’s President, Theophilus Premetis, stressed that the university has not made any concrete decision as of yet, though it is obviously a big concern.

“Officially, the university has not decided. They sent me an email last Saturday that said they were thinking about restructuring the language courses but nothing is official yet,” Mr Premetis told Neos Kosmos.

“I am extremely upset. We have been working for nearly 40 years and we have done did very well in terms of promoting Greek and gaining enrolments…we’re now trying to reverse this decision.”

Mr Premetis expressed his dissatisfaction with this announced proposal, given the department has been performing well despite some big obstacles in recent years.

“This year, we had 57 enrolments which I think is quite good. This is off the back of dealing with the COVID-19 problem and, also, we cannot forget three years ago when they tried to downgrade us to a minor instead of a diploma and a major which was later overturned,” he said.

The Foundation stated in its announcement that it is “actively working with legal and higher education specialists to develop a comprehensive response to these changes”.

They stressed that they are “deeply concerned about the future of Modern Greek Studies at Macquarie University and will explore all options to maintain its presence there”

Modern Greek managed to successfully fight back the last time it was threatened through the combined support of the Foundation, students, and the community at large.

The question now remains as to whether it can do so once more, this time against an even bigger threat which is looking to eliminate it for good.