Palestinianism 101
NIK
Palestinianism 101 Palestinianism 101 Starting this fall, students at the University of California, Berkeley, will have the option of taking a new course in the English department, titled The...
...Weisberg stresses that all of the books to be studied do have academic merit, but that the course is tainted by the professor's disclosure of his "political agenda...
...The class, which will be taught by professor Snehal Shingavi, had already caused nationwide controversy, months before even the first syllabuses were to be distributed to registered undergraduates...
...This class takes as its starting point the right of Palestinians to fight for their own selMetermination...
...The Wall Street Journal article included an additional sentence at the end of its reproduction of the course description: "Conservative thinkers are encouraged to seek other [classes...
...This class will examine the history of the Palestinian resistance and the way that it is narrated by Palestinians in order to produce an understanding of the Intifada and to develop a coherent political analysis of the situation...
...Palestinianism 101 Palestinianism 101 Starting this fall, students at the University of California, Berkeley, will have the option of taking a new course in the English department, titled The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance...
...The brutal Israeli military occupation of Palestine, an occupation that has been ongoing since 1948, has systematically displaced, killed, and maimed millions of Palestinian people...
...And yet, from under the brutal weight of the occupation, Palestinians have produced their own culture and poetry of resistance...
...The controversy was sparked by the publication of the course description in a Wall Street Journal article...
...Within days of the release of the course description, that last sentence was removed from Berkeley's Web site...
...According to Adam Weisberg, executive director of Berkeley's Hillel, the course description, and especially that last sentence, "calls into question the academic legitimacy and integrity [of professor Shingavi...
...NIK...
...The course description, as it appears on the Web site of Berkeley's English department (http://english.berkeley.edu), is reproduced here in its entirety: "Since the inception of the Intifada in September of 2000, Palestinians have been fighting for their right to exist...
Vol. 27 • August 2002 • No. 4
