Posted on 08/31/2011 4:57:11 AM PDT by markomalley
Back in the day, if students wanted easy credits, they signed up for underwater basket-weaving. Now they just need a political cause.
The University of California, Berkeley is offering students college credit to work for an expressly political organization fighting for affirmative action and immigrant rights.
This semester, the African Studies department at Berkeley is offering a two-credit class called Fighting to Learn, Learning to Fight: Building the Movement for Public Education and Equality.
The class is sponsored by BAMN The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrants Rights And Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary and advertises itself to students who want to increase underrepresented minority enrollment, restore affirmative action and overturn Prop. 209 and pass CA DREAM Act 131 and a UC-Wide DREAM Act.
According to its website, the class will focus on four main tenants of BAMNs program: the promise of public education and its role in American society, the centrality of fighting racism and the New Jim Crow, the importance of building an independent, youth-led movement and our responsibility to fight for our own liberation as leaders.
The class is part of Berkeleys DeCal program, a student-run democratic education program. Students design and teach their own accredited pass/no-pass courses. However, the courses must be approved by a department and the Academic Senate.
The course is led by two student instructors. The faculty sponsor is Robert Allen, an adjunct professor of African American studies & ethnic studies, as well as a graduate adviser for the department. He has been actively involved with BAMN.
According to the class syllabus, the coursework includes a weekly choice between a 1-2 page reflection paper or a field organizing assignment. Two of the three choices for the class final project are producing a documentary video about a BAMN action and delivering a speech at a BAMN event.
The courses reading list contains BAMN material such as The Character and Aims of BAMN and The BAMN Pledge.
The political nature of the class has drawn the ire of some, especially groups opposed to affirmative action efforts.
These institutions are funded by the taxpayers who passed Prop. 209 by 55 percent, said Ward Connerly, President of the American Civil Rights Institute. Even if this is not one of the official classes, the resources of the university are being used. The class will be conducted on university property. the campus is not supposed to do this.
The class, and Connerlys objections, are but another salvo in a long, bitter war between Connerly and BAMN.
Connerly, a former UC regent, spearheaded the campaign for Proposition 209, a California ballot referendum that banned all affirmative action programs in 1996. BAMN has been working tirelessly to overturn it ever since. It has organized student political parties on state university campuses since 1999.
Connerly calls BAMN a terrible organization whose objectives are truly foul. BAMN has a whole section of its website dedicated to what it calls Connerlys campaign to resegregate America.
BAMN executive director Donna Stern said the student instructors are volunteers, and that the course is no different than an internship or joining a club.
These are issues of educational equity and access that are part of the foundation of the question of public education, Stern said. Professors all have their opinions. We are simply being more upfront about being upfront about what were doing. This is kind of an alternative curriculum.
According to Berkeley, the DeCal courses are funded by student fees managed by the student government, not by the university itself.
We treat our students like adults, and this is a student-run program, Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof said. They have the freedom to explore a number of issues. Our students are engaged in the world at large.
Neither Professor Allen nor the student instructors responded to requests for comment.
At least they are being overt about something that's gone on covertly for decades on college campii throughout the country.
Universities are the local indoctrination centers for the Mass Insanity movement.
I am getting more than a little pissed off by this.
I dont see how calling me a racist is any different from walking around calling black people ‘nigger’
Affirmative action is racist.
If someone else is given a job that I'm better qualified for simply because they're on an approved list of skin-color, then that's racist discrimination.
Berkeley is a racist organization - just like its spiritual ancestor the Ku Klux Klan.
Perhaps they could look at the destruction of the public school system by unions that lead to uneducated Blacks in the inner city? Now there’s your racism.
Pray for America
We are in a civil war. Every level of educational institution from law school to kindergarten is being used as a breeding ground to disseminate marxist doctrine and train a new generation of useful idiots. Every “issue” from immigration to “the environment” is a vehicle for them to implode the system from the inside out. And they are pushing harder than ever now that the cat’s out of the bag and even the average Joe knows what’s going on. What used to be stealth marxism is now the in-your-face variety.
so you’re saying, “game on.”
Note my tagline.
2. Affirmative Action = institutional racism
Meanwhile UC Berkley is broke and demanding more of your money for this.
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How can you tell if someone is racist? They’re white.
When are white people going to learn to stop judging others by skin color?
/sarc
The nazification of education.
Its not what you learn but who you support and how avid that support is.
That's hugh. Semi-illiterate, but hugh!
Ifyouwonder why it costs so much to send a youne man or woman to college, you need look no farther.
African Studies department at Berkeley is but one of the many BS course’s college’s endorse and pay for with tuition money that could be used to teach Math or Engineering. What place of business will hire a person with a Major in Black studies?
They can get credit for opposing Obama?
We cannot allow them to return institutionalized racism to higher education.
“Anti-racism” is nothing but a code word for anti-white.
The universities will like the concept until some group of kids realize that they attack the university itself, and earn college credits. Then some professor will be dragged into the dean’s office to explain how to stop the punks from attacking the school in court.
Call it ‘service learning’
Whatever course you offer, use ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’ in the syllabus.
You’re home free and open for business. There’s probably grant money in it, too.
Knew a Cannibal named Allen,guy was white thought he was a Native American and hated Blacks and anyone who made it up on hist “hitlist”.
The left thought he was a perfect angel till he died of a drug overdose,I think I got a letter of thanks the next day.Had nothing to do with that idiot’s death.
Your in good company or you were,Robert.
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