http://observer.com/2016/09/uc-berkeley-suspends-class-after-observer-op-ed-labeled-anti-israel/
“Less than a week after Observer contributor Abraham H. Miller exposed “Cal Berkeley’s Latest Effort to Erase Jewish History From Israel,” the university has “suspended” the class in question, “pending completion of the mandated review and approval process.””
https://www.sott.net/article/303089-Genocide-in-Palestine-An-exception-to-free-speech
(to be clear: this is not an endorsement of Bazian’s views. I’m just sharing something he wrote that is relevant here.)
Then the original Miller’s article belongs here too:
http://observer.com/2016/09/cal-berkeleys-latest-effort-to-erase-jewish-history-from-israel/
This is relevant to other CC threads:
“The world is divided between the oppressed and the oppressor. This paradigm is so integral to the contemporary university that it is difficult to find liberal arts and social science faculty that do not subscribe to it.”
Waiting for FIRE to rush to Bazian’s free speech defense…
The Regents policy on course content has nothing to do with free speech. Bazian can sprout whatever nonsense he wants, but he can’t “create” a student-taught, credit-bearing course which "espouses a single political viewpoint and/or appears to offer a forum for political organizing rather than an opportunity for the kind of open academic inquiry that Berkeley is known for.”
Lets not confuse academic freedom with free speech.
Bazian didn’t create the course–he was just its sponsor (student-created courses require faculty sponsors).
(just to be clear, I’m not a Bazian supporter. I don’t know much about this particular case. I also know that Israel is worthy of criticism and that anti-Semitism is a real problem, so I don’t have a dog in the fight either way)
I wouldn’t want to be a student with an obviously Jewish last name anywhere around this guy.
Why not? Isn’t the point of college to confront ideas that might be challenging?
No, that’s not what I meant. I didn’t say “I wouldn’t want to take a class from this guy since I wouldn’t want to be exposed to ideas that challenge my own” and I don’t know why you would have drawn that from my statement.
I said “I wouldn’t want to be a student with a Jewish name around him” because in reading the totality of the articles, I couldn’t rest assured that he wouldn’t harbor prejudices or grade a Jewish student unfairly.
Exactly. A university could decide that there will be no Pro-Klu-Klux-Klan class and that wouldn’t infringe on free speech. And as you said it’s not that as Jew I’m afraid of being exposed to his ideas, I’m afraid of him and how he’d treat me. Big difference.
I thought that was obvious from my statement; I really don’t know how warbrain jumped to his conclusion.
First Oberlin, now this. It seems like anti-Semites are losing their all their safe spaces.
The Abraham Miller piece “exposing” the course – no details, just a bunch of allegations – comes pretty close to hate speech itself. It’s really a shameful exercise.
Of especial note is his diatribe against Bazian conflating Palestinians with the biblical Philistines who lived in Canaan and competed with the Hebrews migrating from Egypt. Miller emphasizes that the latter were “tall, fair-skinned” people related to the ancient Greeks, and implies (at some length, with gratuitous references to Nazis) that the short, swarthy Palestinians are not worthy successors. But surely he knows that – the Hebrew characters for “p” and “f” (or “ph”) being the same – the biblical word translated as “Philistine” is identical to both the Hebrew and Arabic words for “Palestine.” Maybe there’s genetic continuity, maybe not – I don’t know or especially care – but it’s only in English that the connection between the biblical residents of Canaan and the contemporary residents of the West Bank isn’t axiomatic.
Whatever he said sparked an investigation that led to suspension of the course. I’m thinking that Cal didn’t just cancel the course without basis, based solely on the article.
The most valuable in this article was the link to the Syllabus that was on UCB website yesterday but is pulled now…
It included participation in pro-Palestinian rally as a graded activity.
Here is the Syllabus:
https://www.scribd.com/document/323947854/University-of-California-Berkeley-syllabus-for-Palestine-A-Settler-Colonial-Analysis
@Hunt, I agree that Nazi reference was cringeworthy although I do not understand your linguistical analysis. Can you explain for people without elite degrees?
@CCDD14: Thank you for posting that. A description of the course in question is exactly what was missing from all the articles.
Before reading the course description I was on the side of the instructor. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to have classes take certain political views as axiomatic (for the purpose of instruction) so long as they’re upfront about it. This course is not that.
It also used the word “utilize,” which is terrible.
I don’t think a student could teach a course like this very well. I suppose a professor might be able to teach a course fairly with a syllabus as one-sided as that one appears to be, but not a student.
Does being a “colonist” necessarily imply the existence of a colonial power? If so, who is the colonial power in this relationship?
I’m me, not Hunt.
It’s a really simple point. The Hebrew words in the Old Testament that we generally translate as “Philistine” and “Philistines” are the very same words (or almost; I won’t speak to every form) that are used in Hebrew and Arabic today for “Palestine” and “Palestinians.” The first letter is a feh or peh, and it can be pronounced either “ph” or “p” depending on the grammatical situation (based on rules I don’t know or understand) without changing the meaning of the word. Americans tend to think of the Philistines the way we might think of the Samaritans or the Midianites, i.e., some archaic tribe in the bible with no modern presence. It was sort of a shock to me one day when I was reading a biblical passage in Hebrew and realized that it was talking about the Palestinians.
Re: the syllabus. It does NOT require participation in a pro-Palestinian rally as a graded activity. It requires writing a two-page paper about attending a Palestinian event (which could be a political rally, or could be purely social, or cultural), and if you don’t want to attend an event you can write the paper about a reading or film.
Personally, I didn’t find the syllabus objectionable. Obviously, it’s anti-Zionist – I don’t think people using the phrase “settler colonialism” are much interested in defending the settlers. But that alone hardly makes it unique or unfit for academic attention.