(TibetanReview.net, Feb26’25) –Scholars and the Tibetan community in Switzerland have expressed dismay over the report that the University of Bern, the last academic institution in Switzerland offering courses in Tibetology, plans to shut down its Tibetan culture and classical language classes from the fall semester of this year. The university has been offering these courses over the past several decades and a professor has questioned its reasons for this decision, reported buddhistdoor.net Feb 24, citing Swiss newspaper Le Temps.
Citing the reasons for its decision, the university has explained that a professorship had reached the end of its term and the Faculty of History and Philosophy—including the Department of Religious Studies which encompasses Tibetology—were being reorganized.
Besides, “it was found that the number of students for the specialization in Asian religions, particularly in Mongolia and Tibet, was very low,” the university’s head of communications, Nathalie Matter, was quoted as saying. She has added that the difficulty of learning these languages had “a deterrent effect” on prospective students.
The professorship would be reoriented toward “empirical” research in religious studies with “a link to the present and relevance to society,” based on an external evaluation, in order to respond to scientific considerations and interest among students, Matter has explained.
“We can expect good attendance in the adapted course, which will no longer require compulsory language skills,” she has added.
The university has also maintained that the “history of ideas of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism” would remain “an important pillar of the field of religious studies.”
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The university’s lecturer in Tibetology, Prof. Yannick Laurent, who had spent 10 years living with Tibetan communities in India and Tibet, has expressed regret over the decision, observing that Switzerland had, since the 1960s, been the principal host in the West for the Tibetan community in exile.
According to him, the number of students had been stable at between five and 10 per year for 8–10 hours of classes per week, which he has said was comparable to other European universities.
He has also noted that Tibetan and Himalayan studies were “booming” elsewhere in the world, partly because of their interdisciplinary characteristics at the intersection of language learning, religious studies, ethnology, geography, and history. He has cited Harvard University as an example, with two professors of Tibetology, and added that the European Research Council was financing five projects devoted to Tibetan studies.
He has expressed hope that concerned foundations might be willing to fund a new Tibetology chair at a Swiss university—something relatively rare in Switzerland.
“In view of the large Tibetan community in Switzerland, the end of these study programmes is very regrettable,” Drongpatsang Ngedun Gyatso, the president of the Tibetan Community in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, has said.