The Center for Language Education (CLE), established in 1992 as the Language Teaching Center, is the administrative home for the teaching of foreign languages whose literatures are not taught by the regular professorial staff in the established departments at Johns Hopkins University.

CLE offers the following languages: Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Sanskrit. In addition, American Sign Language and English as a Second Language are also offered in CLE. The language programs offered at the center not only provide skills in the target languages but also develop awareness, understanding, and appreciation of their cultural systems.

Students can use the CLE’s for-credit language classes to fulfill major requirements in anthropology, classics, cognitive sciences, East Asian studies, English, history, film and media studies, international studies, Jewish studies, Near Eastern studies, philosophy, sociology, and Writing Seminars.

Students from many university divisions take CLE courses, with the greatest number being Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and Whiting School of Engineering undergraduates, followed by graduate and postgraduate students from those schools as well as the schools of public health, education, medicine, and business, the Institute for Policy Studies, and the Peabody Conservatory of Music. Undergraduates take the courses for credit; other students may take courses to fulfill language requirements or for personal and professional development.

The CLE does not currently offer undergraduate majors, minors or graduate programs.