Starting with the very first Russian language course Joseph Kautz ever took as a college student in Nebraska, all the way up to his position as Head of Stanford University’s Digital Language Lab for fifteen years, there was one thing that Kautz always loved about being an expert in languages.
It had, however, nothing to do with language.
“When I told people I was studying Russian they ‘oohed and ahhed’ and I was so shallow and insecure I needed that ‘ooh and ahh’ and I followed that all the way to Stanford,” Kautz admitted.
Shallow, insecure, and as Kautz sadly confesses, “intolerably arrogant,” too.
Now,