Ethnic and Racial Mix Stirs Dispute Over Berkeley Curriculum Revision

How much should a university’s curriculum reflect the ethnic and racial background of its students?

That question is being debated at UC Berkeley, where about half of the undergraduates are non-Anglos, compared to about one-third in 1980. Because of that changing ethnic mix, a faculty committee wants all undergraduates to take a course about American Culture and the contributions of minorities.

The proposal is controversial. The faculty Academic Senate’s first meeting on the issue last spring turned into a shouting match, the likes of which several participants say they had not seen since the Vietnam War protest days.

The campus is gearing up for another Academic Senate discussion on Nov. 28 when supporters of the course will try to reverse the tactical defeat they suffered in May; some want time to work out a compromise.

“This is a hot issue and has a lot of symbolism in it, too,” said UC Berkeley Chancellor Ira Michael Heyman, a supporter of the plan, in an interview. “It seems to me, at this moment with the extraordinary mixing of young peoples of various ethnicities, that some self-conscious attempt to address those types of concerns is a very good idea.”

UC Berkeley, of course, is not alone in grappling with such ideas. For example, tempers are still cooling at Stanford University after last year’s dispute over changes in the Western Culture program there. But the pressures are different at UC Berkeley because, unlike Stanford, it is a public institution.

Specified Groups

As originally proposed by a special committee of the Academic Senate, all UC Berkeley undergraduates starting in 1990 would be required to take a one-semester course dealing with some aspect of American history, society or culture and devoting more than half its content to at least two of four specified minority groups. Those groups are “Native Americans, Chicano/Latino Americans, Afro-Americans and Asian Americans” and were chosen because they have been more excluded from the mainstream of American life than others, according to the plan’s authors.

An estimated 35 to 40 new courses would be established to meet the requirement in a wide range of departments, including history, English, religion, sociology, political science, economics, education, linguistics, anthropology, music and art.

Ethnic studies professor Ronald Takaki said establishing the courses would be “one modest step to acknowledging the reality of American society. . . . Students come here and don’t see themselves in the faculty, which is 92% white, and they don’t see themselves in the curriculum.”

However, critics charge that the original plan is poorly conceived and would result in shallow survey courses. More stinging, they say that the proposal discriminates against minorities not included in the specified four and that the Heyman administration supports it only because of political pressure from student activists.

“I don’t think the cultures of those four groups have been excluded more than Mormons, Jews, Italians, Armenians or Muslims,” said business professor David Vogel. He described as “absurd” claims that learning about different ethnic cultures will promote harmony. “Knowing about a group might make you like them less, not more,” he said.

History professor Roger Hahn also opposed the original plan.

“There are lots of things students should know and there is no justification for this particular requirement as opposed to others,” he said. “Arguments could be made for required courses on the Third World, on ethics and morals, on the role of science and technology in society.” The American Cultures proposal, he added, is very unsophisticated, lumping together, for example, many different cultures and groups under the heading of “Asian.”

Didn’t Expect Reaction

But both Vogel and Hahn said they would support a requirement in some aspect of a non-Western civilization, a topic that many existing courses cover.

William Simmons, the anthropology professor who is chairman of the special committee that sparked the debate, said he is working to change the proposal to ease some of the criticism. “We have to make it clear to people that this is not an attempt to exclude white Americans from American history,” he said. “We didn’t quite anticipate the degree that people felt that the suffering of their group was not being acknowledged.”

Simmons said the controversy at Stanford “may have frightened people” at UC Berkeley. Last spring, Stanford moved to expand the reading list of classics in its required Western Culture courses to better reflect the achievements of women and minorities. That provoked scathing criticism from then-U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett and other political conservatives.

However, Stanford’s additional requirement that all undergraduates take a course in a non-Western culture was not changed by last spring’s vote. At Stanford, and at a growing number of schools such as UC Santa Cruz and Pepperdine University, ethnic studies mandates are fulfilled by classes in, for example, Japanese painting or Latin American literature. However, the authors of the UC Berkeley plan stress the importance of a course that would compare various cultures within American society.

Some UC Berkeley professors and students complain that required courses in general go against the freewheeling campus environment and are usually taught lethargically and attended reluctantly. Students now fulfill various so-called breadth requirements in the humanities and the sciences with many different courses. The exceptions are a course in American history and institutions, which almost all students fulfill with high school credits, and a reading and composition course requirement.

Considered a Defeat

UC Berkeley professors who attended the May 10 Academic Senate meeting voted 185 to 155 to send a mail ballot on the issue to all 1,500 faculty members. That was widely considered a defeat for the American Cultures proposal--and for the Heyman administration--because conservative teachers are thought less likely to attend a public meeting. Also, opponents want to avoid student demonstrators.

However, the mail ballot was never sent out and the new Academic Senate chairman, history professor John Heilbron, said recently that a mail ballot on such an issue would violate the organization’s bylaws. Heilbron will seek a repeal of the earlier vote and approval of more study of the American Cultures idea.

The Simmons committee and Chancellor Heyman are in a difficult position. Asked about what changes he would like to see in the plan, Heyman replied: “I’m not in a position, nor do I desire to discuss the particulars now.”

Student activists say they are suspicious of any compromise. Dropping the wording about the four specified minority groups would strip the proposal of its original intent, said Mark Min, a graduate student in urban planning who is the lone student on the Simmons committee. Such a changed plan “wouldn’t address the systematic exclusion of these four groups from the curriculum and the faculty,” Min said.

New Protests Seen

The original plan has the support of the student government, ethnic associations and even the councils of fraternities and sororities. Some UC Berkeley students and teachers question the depth of such commitment to the issue. But others say a new era of campus protests could begin if the plan is changed too much.

“This has the potential to explode,” said Alfonso Salazar, a junior who is a student government officer and a leader in a Chicano students’ group.