Teacher, Palestinian activist: My class isn't for 'conservative thinkers'
By The Associated Press
05.16.02
Editor's note: The Associated Press reported on May 20 that Snehal Shingavi was reworking his course description so that it didn't discourage conservatives — or anyone else — from attending the class. He said his warning to conservatives was a mistake and that he never intended to suppress free speech. "I like debates. I think debate is healthy and important," said Shingavi, who held a campus news conference on May 20.
BERKELEY, Calif. — Officials at the University of California at Berkeley are reviewing a class taught by a pro-Palestinian activist whose course description discourages "conservative thinkers" from enrolling.
Berkeley administrators said there was a "failure of oversight" by the English department to review the description for the class, "The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance," to be taught this fall.
Snehal Shingavi, 26, a fifth-year graduate student in English, included in the class description for his undergraduate course a warning that "conservative thinkers are encouraged to seek other sections."
The description of the course, which examines the Palestinian narration of the resistance movement, also said there would be no debate about the right of Palestinians to fight for their own self-determination.
Chancellor Robert Berdahl said in a statement last week that the class would be watched to make sure qualified students are not turned away. The course currently is filled, with 17 students and a waiting list.
"It is imperative that our classrooms be free of indoctrination — indoctrination is not education," Berdahl said. "Classrooms must be places in which an open environment prevails and where students are free to express their views."
Shingavi, a leader of the campus group Students for Justice in Palestine, defended his course, saying he has a right to limit class themes.
"You can have a series of debates about Israel's right to destroy Palestine, but those are not germane to the questions about how Palestinians understand themselves and how they understand resistance," Shingavi said. "I'm not restricting the class. It is merely a warning that the course has certain kinds of themes that are at its core."
But civil liberties advocates say they consider Shingavi's attitude disturbing, especially at the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement.
"A professor teaching the African-American diaspora cannot say that any student who comes to this course has to accept my views of the struggle of blacks in America," said Thor Halvorssen, executive director of the Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.