Of course it is crucial for any university to teach languages. For fields like history or archaeology of various regions of the world, a lot (if not most) of th

Of course it is crucial for any university to teach languages. For fields like history or archaeology of various regions of the world, a lot (if not most) of the reading that one has to do will be in languages other than English. Any North American university library will have at least some scholarship in its stacks in a language other than English. Also, in spite of the belief that language degrees are useless, they are an important first step, if not a prerequisite, towards 1) graduate studies in a field that draws on that language, and 2) various on-the-ground careers in the respective country. Lots of journalists based in and specializing in some region, started off with a degree in the language of that country, for example.