I am attending the "Ninth Annual Conference of the Society for Sephardic Studies Sephardi Jews between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean" in June this year - along with others in this group I am sure, but received an e-mail from the organisers that may be of interest to this group as a topic of discussion. It would see that "due to a handful of questions posted in private e-mails by many of the members concerning the “revolutionary change in the policy of the Society” and the “sad joining the narrative of Anglification of the International Research” the organisers have had to emphasise that any of the five official languages (Hebrew, Ladino (sic :)), Spanish, Portuguese and English) can be used.As a anglophone scholar I would want to argue against the views expressed on three grounds:a) it is pragmatically a simple fact that English is the lingua franca of modern scholarship and the only language of the five that the majority of us have in common. I am sorry that this can put non-anglophones at something of a disadvantage, but it is far less of a disadvantage than adopting one of the other languages as the prime language.b) it may be that having the conference in Lisbon means most presenters will be lusophone or hispanophone HOWEVER the fact of Sephardi diaspora means that most Sephardi Jewish scholars are neither. The anti-anglo policy which seems to be preferred by some means 1) that the large number of anglophone scholars of the Atlantic diaspora in particular would be dissuaded from the conference - as is usual.2) despite the historical importance of Portuguese and Spanish to our communities it imposes the languages of the oppressors we escaped to the Dutch- and anglo-phone 'terras de judesmo' and 3) it creates an Iberian scholarly ghetto where often non-Jewish Iberian scholars talk about 'Sepharad' with no reference or (sometimes) little understanding of Jewish realities. As Jewish subjects we do not belong to Iberian scholars - this is our past in your country!