Middlebury announces the end of MIIS, a devastating blow to Monterey.

The college and university system is sometimes derisively described as an Ivory Tower, a place where elitists gather to come up with esoteric ideas from on high, disassociated from the real world. Certainly there are examples of this, although I’d argue that it’s worthwhile for everyone to learn how to write clearly or critically read a poem, just as much as to learn financial literacy or how to change a tire.

But my take aside, MIIS has never been that kind of institution. It’s been a graduate school where people – many of them dreamers with grand goals like world peace, sure – come to earn graduate degrees in practical fields like translation and interpretation, counterterrorism and cybersecurity. Many of them come from abroad (currently 44 countries); many of them go far afield in pursuit of grandiose goals, but many stay in Monterey County.

I don’t know how I could begin to measure the impact of MIIS in Monterey County – it’s the kind of study that a local agency might contract MIIS faculty and students to produce. All I know is that it’s significant, in tangible and intangible ways.

So the news, delivered in person on campus by Middlebury College President Ian Baucom on Thursday, Aug. 28, that the board voted the day before to close the institution, is a blow to Monterey. Of course it is crushing personally to the 63 staff and 61 faculty members (a total of 125) whose careers are disrupted. (A later meeting with HR officials informed staff that 15 of them will be out of work on Jan. 1, and others will be phased out after that.) For our community, it means the end of Monterey as a draw for world-class thinkers in their fields. Monterey Mayor Tyller Williamson says it’s too soon to know what the economic impact to downtown will be, “but I’m sure it will create some level of discomfort for some of the businesses.”

But that’s all looking ahead. Looking back, I have heard from current and former MIIS employees that the institution never quite got on the right track after a fork in the road 20 years ago. What was originally the Monterey Institute of International Studies kept its acronym but became the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey in 2015, a decade after the Vermont college first made moves to take over MIIS.

“The cultures clashed,” a longtime former staffer tells me. “MIIS was always small and nimble and scrappy. Midd is a large 3,000-student campus in rural Vermont; MIIS is a 700-student graduate school in semi-urban coastal California.”

“We urge the MIIS board of trustees to reassess.”

Some felt like it was never a fit. Not to mention that giving over decision-making authority to a board based 3,000 miles away, with no skin in the local game, makes it easy to account for what is best for Middlebury College’s bottom line, not for the local community. (For more on Baucom’s thinking, read a news story by David Schmalz on p. 15.)

Middlebury officials plan to close down degree programs by June 2027, so currently enrolled students can graduate. The James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, which Baucom described as “self-sustaining,” will remain.

It’s too soon to know exactly what the real fate of all of MIIS’ programs will be; some may find other institutions to claim them. There is a need.

The Switzerland-based International Association of Conference Interpreters (AIIC) issued a statement saying, “For decades, MIIS was the quintessential conference interpreting training in the United States, and in recent years, it had also become the last comprehensive conference program. This is part of a larger program affecting conference interpreting globally, but with its own national undertones.

“With this decision, there will be no conference interpreter training in the entire U.S.… given the gravity of the situation, we urge the MIIS president and board of trustees to reassess.”

The forces that the AIIC alludes to – the national undertones in the MAGA era – make it harder for international faculty and students to come to MIIS at present. But they are exactly the forces that places like MIIS exist to counteract – scholars trained in not just fighting against an enemy, but understanding an enemy across the planet.

It’s the kind of institution of learning we need more of, not less of, in times like these.

SARA RUBIN is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at sara@montereycountynow.com or follow her at @sarahayleyrubin.bsky.social.