No place for Yiddish

London University's School of Oriental and African studies is no place for serious Jewish studies. It has too few lecturers and the ideological environment is uncomfortable ("Outcry as Soas drops Yiddish", THES , October 11). The last remaining Yiddish postgraduate student was forced to leave and Soas is now Yiddishrein . Soas administers a multimillion pound endangered languages project. Who can guarantee its impartiality when it comes to endangered Jewish languages?

Gennady Estraikh
Former lecturer in Yiddish linguistics, Soas