{"id":268610,"date":"2016-09-20T18:47:18","date_gmt":"2016-09-20T18:47:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/berkeley-allows-palestine-course-to-be-taught\/"},"modified":"2016-09-20T18:47:18","modified_gmt":"2016-09-20T18:47:18","slug":"berkeley-allows-palestine-course-to-be-taught","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/berkeley-allows-palestine-course-to-be-taught\/","title":{"rendered":"Berkeley Allows Palestine Course to Be Taught"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On Sept. 19, UC-Berkeley Dean\u00a0Carla Hesse rescinded<\/a>\u00a0her Sept. 13\u00a0suspension of a student-led course on Palestine<\/a>. But the controversy over her original suspension of the course remains a hotly contested debate. Known as a DeCal (short for “Democratic Education at\u00a0Cal”), the class was part of a special set of for-credit classes designed and taught by students under the supervision of professors. The course on\u00a0Palestine\u00a0was approved by the normal process at\u00a0Berkeley.<\/p>\n

Hesse\u00a0said she suspended the class because a copy of the proposal never was filed with her office. But this explanation drew scrutiny because the DeCal website specifically exempts courses in Letters & Sciences from this requirement. Instead, critics pointed to a letter from 43 pro-Israel organizations that protested a class taught from a Palestinian perspective and complained that it was biased and a violation of\u00a0Berkeley\u00a0policies prohibiting political indoctrination and anti-Semitism.<\/p>\n

Dean Hesse wrote, “I did not request or require any revisions of the content of the course,” a claim questioned by some of the people at the Sept. 13 meeting with her.\u00a0Hesse’s letter today states: “The Department has now responded to my questions and concerns. The Student Facilitator, the Chair and the Executive Committee of the Department of Ethnic Studies determined that revisions of the course in light of these concerns were necessary and appropriate.” If\u00a0Hesse\u00a0wasn’t requesting changes, why would the department be responding to her concerns by revising the course?<\/p>\n

Paul Hadweh, the student facilitator, denied that he or anyone else determined that changes in the course were necessary and appropriate: “That’s not the case.” According to Hadweh, he made “cosmetic changes” that clarified things, but “the course itself is not changing.” He says “the substance of the course” remains exactly the same. And that seems to be the case: the readings and schedule in the\u00a0new syllabus<\/a>\u00a0are almost exactly the same, with no new…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Sept. 19, UC-Berkeley Dean\u00a0Carla Hesse rescinded\u00a0her Sept. 13\u00a0suspension of a student-led course on Palestine. But the controversy over her original suspension of the course remains a hotly contested debate. Known as a DeCal (short for “Democratic Education at\u00a0Cal”), the class was part of a special set of for-credit classes designed and taught by students […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-268610","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268610\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}