More on Snehal Shingavi, the UC Berkeley English grad student whose freshman composition courses are more invested in indoctrinating students than in teaching them to write: a fine San Francisco Chronicle article with some choice quotes from the ACLU, UC Regent Ward Connerly and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education's Thor Halvorssen, and a Daily Cal article that has been reprinted in the portal of portals, the Drudge Report.

UC Chancellor Robert Berdahl was quoted thus in the Daily Cal: "It is not appropriate for an academic class to discourage or exclude anyone from attending on political grounds ...That is very objectionable. The discourse cannot be constrained by the political perspective of an instructor." Cal has published an official statement on its web site, which I reprint below. If you have written personally to any Berkeley admins about the issue, you may recognize it as the text you received in reply to your letter (I know several people who took the time to write to Berkeley today; those who addressed their emails to Janet Adelman, Chair of English, received the press release--mailed in bulk--in lieu of an actual reply with actual manners of the "Dear So and So" and "Sincerely yours" variety). I paste:

The following is a statement addressing questions raised about a course scheduled for the fall 2002 semester titled, "The Politics and Poetics of Palestine Resistance."

There was a failure of oversight on the part of the English Department in reviewing course proposal descriptions for the reading and composition sections. This failure is in the process of being addressed. Structures will be put in place to ensure all course descriptions will be developed in accord with the Faculty Code of Conduct, specifically that courses not exclude or discourage qualified students on grounds other than lack of preparation.

In this particular case, the English Department will immediately revise the course description to ensure open access. In addition, the department chair will provide oversight for this class to ensure that it is conducted in accordance with the Faculty Code of Conduct. Among the code's requirements is that there be no "discrimination, including harassment, against a student on political grounds, or for the reasons of race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, national origin."

Chancellor Robert M. Berdahl stated: "I am concerned that this failure of oversight has occurred and I am pleased that the English Department is acting immediately to remedy it. Universities should not avoid presenting controversial material, and we do not. It is imperative that our classrooms be free of indoctrination -- indoctrination is not education. Classrooms must be places in which an open environment prevails and where students are free to express their views."

You gotta love the passive voice. The statement "address[es] questions raised about a course" -- but does not say who raised the questions or what, specifically, they were. "There was a failure of oversight on the part of the English Department" -- but there is no person who committed the oversight. "This failure is in the process of being addressed" -- but not by anybody in particular. "Structures will be put in place" -- but, again, not by anybody in particular. The Chancellor is "concerned that this failure of oversight has occurred" -- funny how things just "occur" all by themselves, isn't it? Especially when "oversight" is not occurring.

My favorite thing about the statement, though, is its use of metonymy to deflect attention from the people who are responsible for creating--and remedying--the intellectual climate that made it possible for Snehal Shingavi to engage in blatantly partisan non-pedagogy for the better part of the past two years. Notice that the problem will be addressed not by individuals (who could then be held accountable for any future failures of "oversight"), but by "the English Department," which is "acting immediately to remedy" the oversight and which will "immediately revise the course description to ensure open access." I've spent the last fifteen years of my life in one English department or another (four of them at Berkeley) and I have yet to see an English department act, immediately or otherwise. But by promising that an inanimate entity will immediately remedy the situation, the Berkeley spin doctors create the effect of purposeful collective action without actually drawing attention to individual actors or their individual acts. Nobody is taking responsibility here. Or, perhaps it would be more correct to say that no responsibility has been or will be taken.

Ironically, in Berkeley's effort to convince concerned citizens, students, and parents that proper action is being taken, more "failures" of "oversight" have been made.

• The statement gets the course name wrong, for starters. The problematic course is entitled "The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance," but the official statement promises to address questions raised about "The Politics and Poetics of Palestine Resistance." A small detail, perhaps, but a telling one.
• The statement's promise that exclusionary language in the course description will be removed is hollow. The "English Department," we are told, "will immediately revise the course description to ensure open access." But according to the San Francisco Chronicle, "The course is already full with 17 students and has a waiting list." It's not clear what revising the description for a course that is now closed will do to alter the partisan and ideological terms by which its members have already enrolled. Those students who would have taken the course but for its statement that conservatives need not apply cannot now register for it.
• The notion that compelling a course description to be rewritten in conformity with the Faculty Code of Conduct will somehow magically make the course instructor himself change his views about who is or is not welcome in his course is also awfully hollow--especially since the the course is already closed. Having presumably attracted only those students who accept his political premises, Shingavi will most likely be able to teach this course exactly as he has taught all his other courses at Cal: as an ideological forum for pre-selected political allies. Looked at this way, the statement's assurance that the English department chair will supervise the course to make sure it is conducted in a properly open manner also rings hollow.
• The fact that "The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance" is supposed to be a course primarily devoted to composition has been lost entirely. The fact that the course description does not even mention writing as the principle subject matter of the course has been lost in the uproar about the instructor's attempt to discourage conservative students from enrolling.

One wonders whether--and how--the "English Department" will remedy these new "oversights."