Berkeley students staged a belated protest yesterday, urging the university to hire a professor of Pilipino American studies. Students put on an elaborate three-act performance of guerilla theater, using the much-trafficked open space in front of Dwinelle Hall to "survey a century of discrimination." The aim of the event was to raise consciousness about the need for a specialist in Pilipino American studies at Berkeley by dramatizing how oppressed Filipinos living in America have been. Even if you buy the dubious assumption that discrimination (or accusations of discrimination) somehow produces valid subjects of academic inquiry, and even if you accept the equally dubious premise that identity politics has scholarly validity, there is still a huge problem with this particular line of student activism: there is nothing to protest. Cal has already agreed to hire a Pilipino American studies professor. The ethnic studies department started advertising for a tenure track position earlier this month; the specialist they hire will begin work at Berkeley this June.