When pro-Palestinian activist Snehal Shingavi walks into the Palestinian “resistance poetry” course he’s slated to teach at U.C. Berkeley this fall quarter, there’ll be a few people in the crowd he probably never counted on seeing — pro-Israel students and a university monitor.
The move follows an intense grilling of Shingavi and the university last month in the national press. Among many other outlets, the Wall Street Journal lambasted the course’s content while the American Civil Liberties Union derided Shingavi’s encouragement of “conservative thinkers” to skip his class.
U.C. Berkeley announced this month that a full-time observer from the English department will attend Shingavi’s class, while several pro-Israel activists have signed up for the 17-student English IA course.
Ami Nahshon, executive vice president of the Jewish Federation of the Greater East Bay, had initiated an e-mail drive, imploring thousands nationwide to urge the college to cancel the class.
Recent developments satisfied Nahshon — somewhat.
“Some of us would have liked to have seen the university go farther…and cancel the course outright. Absent the readiness to take that step, the chancellor [Robert Berdahl] has taken the concern about crossing the line from education to indoctrination very seriously,” he said.
“The university has done everything but take the course off the shelf for its own reasons and considerations.”
Nashon added that with the inclusion of pro-Israel students and with the English department monitoring the class “for academic content rather than indoctrination,” he expects it to be “a far cry from what the graduate student had in mind.”
Professor Janet Adelman, chair of the English department, said the controversy over “Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance” is “totally resolved.” In addition to the monitor, any student who felt he or she was being graded “on anything other than academic grounds” will be encouraged to appeal to the department.
Shingavi refused to be interviewed by the Bulletin, but Adelman said the graduate student is “all in favor” of an in-class observer.
The uproar surrounding the class when it was announced earlier this spring, exposed a long-term “failure of oversight” within the department, according to Adelman, in which graduate student instructors were given virtual autonomy to create their own IA courses.
“This was a habitual pattern we had fallen into. We now have a faculty member designated not only to look over all the course descriptions but, much more importantly, to mentor all the GSIs on a whole range of pedagogical questions about their courses,” she said. “That’s already happening. It’s a huge change and a very welcome one.”
Shingavi had urged those who did not share his worldview, to avoid his classes in the past as well, which Adelman referred to as “a problem.” Such violations of the university code of conduct will be caught in the future, she said.
Adam Weisberg, the executive director of Berkeley Hillel, said the inclusion of pro-Israel students in the class — including Berkeley Israel Action Committee leader David Singer — should diversify the course’s content. At best, it could lead to an understanding of “common ground and mutual understanding, which is so sorely missing on this campus.”
Regarding the possibly explosive situation of pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian activists squaring off in class — and the notion that the pro-Israel students are solely intent on disrupting Shingavi’s course — Weisberg said the Jewish students must be given the benefit of the doubt.
“When people suggested Snehal was not interested in educating students but indoctrinating them, they were told to give this instructor a chance, to see if he’s committed to education and appropriate academic conduct. I’m saying, give these students a chance,” he said.
“Let them go to class, let them present themselves. And if they conduct themselves in a way that’s inappropriate and deserving of criticism, then, by all means, criticize them.”
Added Singer, “I have a right as a student to take this class irrespective of my views and beliefs, and I’d like to make sure that right is upheld. To suggest I’m taking this class just to disrupt it is ridiculous. What surprises me is why they’re so scared that someone who disagrees with their views is taking this class with them. If this is truly a class worthy of being taught at the University of California, I should be able to take it and nothing should be said about it. If I disrupt class — which I will not — I should be thrown out of it.”
Adelman chalked up the furor surrounding the course as a learning experience.
“It’s an ongoing process of education for all of us in the department,” she said. “And I’m definitely including Snehal in that learning process.”