Founded in 1868, the University of California, Berkeley is one of the world’s premier institutions of higher learning. Twenty-three of its alumni are Nobel laureates and nineteen laureates have been affiliated with the university, while seven Nobel laureates currently hold faculty positions, the highest number of any university. Berkeley is widely recognized as a world leader in the sciences, it is the only university to have had a chemical element named after it – Berkelium -- and has been the site of discovery for sixteen others, including Plutonium and Californium; and eight of its alumni have been astronauts. Some notable alumni include: Andy Grove, the chairman of Intel; Earl Warren, 14^th Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Robert McNamara, U.S. Secretary of Defense and President of the World Bank; John Kenneth Galbraith, famed economist; and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the fourth president of Pakistan.

 

While Berkeley is perhaps better known for its sciences, it is an academic powerhouse in both the sciences and the arts. Berkeley is the only university to have more graduate programs in the top ten in their fields as ranked by the National Research Council than any other. The National Research Council ranked Berkeley first nationally in the number of “distinguished” programs for the scholarship of Berkeley faculty. This distinction has not gone unrecognized. Berkeley is home to twenty-eight MacArthur “genius” Fellows, greater than any other university; 221 American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellows; and 391 Guggenheim fellows.

 

The university is dedicated to being a “place of the mind,” for the creation and critique of ideas, a location in which people learn and are taught to use their critical mental faculties. Berkeley’s dedication to critical thought has made it a leader in academe. In the past decades, the Berkeley name has come to connote both academic excellence and a certain political liberalism. Although in recent memory, Berkeley’s political environment has been in the limelight far more than its production of knowledge throughout the world, “Berkeley” conveys an elite academic reputation that has been built upon its tradition of academic excellence, fostered over the years through its commitment to teaching and research. Since the last half of the twentieth century, Berkeley has provided a unique and fresh perspective on ideas old and new, in large part due to its interdisciplinary approach. The university, stemming from the word universe, originally was meant as the font of knowledge contained in the entire universe; while any university would be hard-pressed to fulfill that mission, Berkeley is among those that certainly try.

 

The fields of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies are no exception to Berkeley’s academic excellence. They flow from and contribute to Berkeley’s academic reputation and heritage. The case study that follows traces the beginnings and developments of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies at Berkeley.

 

Throughout the world over there are few academic institutions that share Berkeley’s academic reputation and prestige, fewer so in the field of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies. In America, Berkeley stands shoulder to shoulder with universities like Harvard, Princeton, and the University of Chicago – world-renowned both for their general academic reputation, and particularly for their study of Islam and focus on the Middle East.

The study of foreign languages is an essential part of area and religious studies. The study of the Arabic language, then, serves as an important milestone in marking the beginning of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies at Berkeley. Arabic language and literature were first taught at Berkley beginning in 1894.

 

In Europe, the study of Arabic and Semitic languages was originally ensconced in the fold of Biblical study and other dimensions of Christian religious study. The first chair of Arabic language was Edward Pococke of the University of Oxford who in 1636 held the Laudian Chair of Arabic. In the centuries since Professor Pococke, the study of Arabic, of the Middle East, and Islam have taken on new and unforeseen dimensions. The field of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies was formed under the shadow of empire and of European colonialism; as the colonies of Europe’s most powerful nations expanded, there came a need to understand the Arab and Muslim natives, and their history, culture, language. Even today, some of the best scholars and students of Islamica hail from France, Germany, the Netherlands, and of course England, all nations that either had colonies in the Middle East or had trade links to them. The field would once again be reshaped under an altogether new empire.

With the demise of the colonial powers following World War II, America soon became the global hegemon. Though it would not occupy a Middle Eastern nation for more than a century later, America now held the reins of the collective European colonizers. Unlike the British who had established a corps of Arabists, most notably T.E. Lawrence, to assist them in their colonial rule, America lacked those trained in the history, culture, and languages of Arabs and Muslims.

 

Centuries behind Britain, in the 1950s, America began the study of the Middle East and Islam. While arguably the production of knowledge in one manner or another is tied to the power of the day, as Foucault so cogently argued, this is a historical fact for the study of Islam and the Middle East and should be recognized as such. While scholars like Pococke may have been interested in Arabic for its own merit (and there are some still to this day), latter-day scholars like Bernard Lewis and Juan Cole are very well aware of the implications of their scholarship on power structures.

 

The events of September 11, like the establishment of colonial rule or its fall in the Muslim world, once again re-formed the field in its shadow. No doubt the study of the Middle East and Islam are overtly political subjects. Most recently/publicly, the faculty of Columbia University’s Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC) were besieged for an alleged anti-Jewish bias. An official report by Columbia University investigated the matter and thoroughly dismissed the charges.

 

Since September 11, dedicated think tanks, private organizations, and student groups have initiated reform of the study of the Middle East and Islam with overtly political agendas, most often tied to the state of Israel. Berkeley has not escaped this onslaught; on the contrary, it is often a battleground for these groups. In the past two years, Berkeley faculty and the CMES were charged with receiving funding from the same sources that allegedly funded the 9/11 hijackers. These charges came from The Berkeley Jewish Journal, a student publication. Although there was no factual basis to these charges and they were patently false, the publication should have indicated the political nature of the field. A class in the Department of English on “The Poetics of Resistance” that included poetry from Palestinian poets also came under scrutiny.

 

Quite a few Berkeley faculty members have gained national attention for their political opinions rather than for their scholarship. In our day, the fields of Islamic and Middle East studies have become political battlegrounds between academics and those that desire to subvert and mold the study of Islam and the Middle East to meet their desired political ends. We can then refer to this new change in the field as the 9/11 effect.  

 

 

The heart of a university is its library; it serves as a measure of the university’s commitment to academic excellence. Berkeley’s is certainly no exception to this rule. The Doe University Library is among the world’s greatest. In America its collections are the third-largest, behind only the Library of Congress, the largest library in the world, and Harvard University’s Widener Library. In 2002 the Association for Research Libraries (ARL) ranked the Berkeley Library first among public universities and third overall among all university libraries in the world.

 

The library and the academic components of a university rely upon each other for growth and development. Complementing the study of Arabic language and literature in 1894, the library began a modest acquisition of books in (the) Arabic language (vernacular). The establishment of the Department of Near Eastern Studies in the 1950s led the library to begin comprehensive collections in Islamica and Judaica. By 2001, Berkeley’s collection contained 9,280,000 volumes in all languages, 81,963 serials and extensive newsprint, microform, microfilm, cartographics, government documents, and video collections.

 

In 2002, volumes in Middle Eastern languages were estimated at 154,763 monographs and included over 1,500 periodicals in Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Turkish. The library receives generous support from the University in its support of Middle East and Islam-related acquisitions. In the 2000-2001 academic year, the budget for Middle East acquisitions for Islamic and Judaica was $302,000, of which nearly one-third was slotted exclusively for periodicals.

 

Having matured substantially throughout the twentieth century, the Islamica Collection was recently renamed the Middle Eastern Collection to better represent its rich depth and breadth.[1] The Middle East collection is overseen by Ms. Shayee Khanaka, who is fluent in Arabic, Persian, and Kurdish and is skilled in Turkish. She supervises a full-time cataloguer and four part-time student cataloguers with native knowledge of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish. The collection now supports various courses, faculty, and graduate students in a multitude of academic departments, with subjects ranging from the Ancient Near East and Egyptology to the present day and spanning diverse languages and religions, history, and politics. More than 180,000 volumes and nearly 1,000 active periodical subscriptions comprise the collection. The Middle Eastern collection now “counts among the top five most prestigious academic collections of Near Eastern materials in the United States.”[2]

 

Berkeley is fortunate to house a library of “generalized excellence” that provides thorough coverage of the Middle East and Islam. The library remains an indispensable tool for scholarship for the University and the nation. During the past three years, in addition to base funding, the library has received an additional $5.5 million from the Office of the Chancellor.

 

 

The interest of various academic departments in studying the Middle East includes, but is not limited to, anthropology, history, Near Eastern studies, political science, sociology, and many others gelled together with the foundation of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) in 1963. The establishment of the CMES, and its reorganization as a separate academic unit in 1979, has greatly enriched course offerings with a Middle East focus throughout Berkeley’s academic departments.

In the shadow of September 11, 2001, Middle Eastern and Islamic studies have undergone a unique transformation by which scholars specializing in the Middle East and Islam are in great demand in service both to the academy and to the public. Another effect of the transformation of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies has been the great scrutiny to align the academy with American foreign policy interests in the region, or at the very least to be less critical of American foreign policy. This issue, while clearly an infringement upon freedom of speech and thought and both an insult and an onslaught to the academy, has gained national attention. The U.S. Congress last year proposed a resolution, HR 3077, which ultimately failed, to stop critical government funding of the Middle Eastern and Islamic studies and centers for Middle Eastern studies if their instruction and opinions are deemed incongruent with American strategic interest in the region.

In light of post-September 11 challenges, the Berkeley CMES has admirably risen to address these issues in a nuanced and complex way and has not become mired in them. The CMES focuses on a range of academic topics spanning from the pre-modern and classical to the modern and post-modern, from Morocco to Malaysia, and from the Orient to the Occident. Except perhaps Antarctica, there is not a continent where the Center or its affiliated scholars and students have not studied or devoted attention to. In essence, the Center strives to maintain a global context through which Islam and the Middle East can be studied whether a scholar is interested in the architecture of Granada and Andalusia or to studying Muslim populations in Europe and South America. 

            The CMES mission in brief is to provide “support for specialized courses on the Middle East by area studies experts,” and to integrate “Middle East-related content into the existing curricula of various departments as well as the university’s overall program of instruction.”[3] In fulfillment of its mission, the CMES offers various grants and holds seminars for non-specialist faculty to introduce Middle East case studies in their respective courses. This approach, based on Berkeley’s tradition of inter-disciplinary approaches and study, has met with great success. Within the humanities, for example, “Art History 10: Introduction to Art: Ancient to Medieval” focuses on Middle Eastern art. Within the social sciences, case material from Middle Eastern cities and Islamic settings in treated in “"Geography 104: The City in the Third World" and "Geography 107: Geography of Religions.”

The Center is funded from a variety of sources, including major donations, endowments, and other sources of university and federal funding. The Center in past years has attracted millions of dollars of funding. In 1998 the Center received its single largest donation of $5 million from the Sultan Charity Foundation for the creation of endowment towards Arab Studies. The endowment now supports outreach, post-doctoral scholars, research, visiting faculty, and library acquisitions relating to the 2003-2006 CMES theme, “Arab Culture: Traditions and Transformations.” In 1997 the financial support of an alumnus led to the creation of the Al-Falah Program that is designed for Islamic studies and technology transfer to the Middle East.

 

Not all donations have been limited to Islamica. In 2002, the Diller Family Endowment, with holdings of $3 million, was founded to enrich the existing Jewish Studies program and to create a visiting Israeli scholars program. Over the years CMES has also received a $500,000 endowment from the Mellon Foundation, which was matched by CMES in 1997 for the purpose of teaching Middle Eastern languages. In February 1999, an anonymous donor bequeathed property currently valued at $2.5 million for a Professorship in Iranian Art and Archeology and for annual graduate fellowship. CMES has also received annual contribution from corporations with Middle East-related business interests (Chevron, Aramco, and Hewlett-Packard), and from various smaller private corporations.

The most important resource of any university is not its collection of books, or its centers, or even its endowment; while these resources are certainly essential, the most important resource of any university is its human capital: faculty and its students. The students come for the faculty. The faculty members come for other resources, though some even at large research universities not only share a passion for teaching but also excel at it; after all, even the most famous professors have their share, however limited it may be, of teaching responsibilities.

 

Berkeley is no exception. Its faculty is among the very best in the world. In the field of Islamic and Middle East studies, Berkeley is a force. The NES Department is home to some of the foremost scholars of Persian, Iran, Sufism, and Islamic studies in general, including Dr. Hamid Algar, who remains the only person to have predicted the Iranian revolution a year earlier in 1978. Prof. Algar is an academic juggernaut in the field of Islamica and for students of Islamica is its crown jewel.  

 

The department is also home to Professors Margaret Larkin, Mohammad Siddiq, and John Hayes, who all work in the Arabic language. Among the three, there is no aspect of Arabic, in either its modern, classical, or pre-modern forms, that is not covered. The strength of Islamic studies at Berkeley lies almost uniquely in Dr. Algar. He is among a handful of scholars who have both great breadth and depth in their scholarship. There are very few subjects in which he could not speak with insight and knowledge or supervise a Ph.D. dissertation. In addition to his mastery of five European languages, he is among only two scholars who are fluent in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish (the other being Prof. Cornell Fleischer of the University of Chicago). In the field of Islamic studies, the NES Department relies almost uniquely upon Dr. Algar’s sui generis abilities, as it has not made any additional hires, and does not intend to in the near future. In essence, there is not a facet of Islamic studies in which Dr. Algar does not provide some instruction or support; he is a polymath.

 

The Department of History has three top-notch academics, each a leading star in is or her respective fields: Professors Beshara Doumani, Maria Mavroudi, and Leslie Pierce. Professor Doumani is a social historian of the Middle East and works closely on the Levant. His most recent work has been a book on academic freedom, a must-read for those concerned with issues of academic freedom in post-September 11 environment. Professor Mavroudi was recently awarded a MacArthur “genius” Fellowship for her work examining Byzantine history and the interplay of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam in the Mediterranean. In recognition of her prize, the university will be expanding its library collections on Byzantium to further assist her. A specialist in Ottoman history, Professor Leslie Pierce, was recently awarded the prestigious Albert Hourani Book Prize by the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) for her new book Morality Tales: Law and Gender in the Ottoman Court of Aintab.

While there are numerous academic programs through which Islam and the Middle East can be studied, the two B.A. programs explicitly devoted to their study are the Middle Eastern Studies (MES) and Near Eastern Studies (NES) programs. These two programs are of extremely high quality and provide students with the opportunity to work very closely with world-renowned faculty. The MES major also requires a thesis that allows students to explore a topic of their interest with great depth.

 

Prior to September 11, both majors had about 20 students and graduates six students per year, these numbers have considerably increased since then. The MES major now has over 40 students and graduated 18 students last year;

True to its origins in philology, the NES major emphasizes Middle Eastern languages and literature of the students’ choosing. The major is divided into three tracks: 1) the major in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures (Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, and Turkish; and, Assyriology and Hittitology, or Egyptology); 2) the major in Ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern Art and Archeology (Ancient Near Eastern Art and Archeology; and Egyptian Art and Archeology); and 3) the major in Near Eastern Civilizations (Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations; and Islamic Civilizations).

 

The major allows students to study a multitude of languages both extant and non-extant (Akkadian, Cuneiform, or Sumerian), for those studying extant languages (Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew, or Turkish) they can also choose to study the language of their choosing in both classical and modern usages. The major requires students to devote two years to lower-division language training, six advanced languages courses, and two lecture-based courses. (While most students focus upon Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew, or Turkish, the major also offers training in Egyptology, Egyptian Art and Archeology, Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations, and the aforementioned ancient or non-extant languages.)

 

Responding to growing student interest in the Middle East, in 1982 the CMES established the B.A. in MES. The major is interdisciplinary “in structure and emphasis”[4] and lies within the fold of modern area studies. The MES major requires: an introductory lecture-based course (NES 10); two years of an extant Middle Eastern language; survey courses in three different disciplinary areas (Geography/Ethnography, History, and Current Political, Economic, and Social Development), and a cluster of four courses relating to a senior thesis topic.[5] The International and Area Studies Teaching Program, in conjunction with the CMES, administers the major. The faculty and staff of the Center provide “academic advising, admit students to the major, assign faculty and thesis advisors, provide a directory of Middle East courses each semester, and organize career seminars, relevant lectures, and other campus activities relating to the Middle East.”[6]

 

Recognizing the need that not every student desiring to study the Middle East or Islam may have the opportunity to major in MES or NES, both are also offered as minors for students desiring to earn a university qualification. NES provides various minors corresponding to its rich offering of different languages and literature, and specialties in Egyptology and archeology, and ancient studies. Established in 1999, the MES minor requires an introductory course to the Middle East and five upper-division Middle East related courses from three departments.

 

A great number of students also benefit from Berkeley’s diverse offering of academic courses with a Middle Eastern and/or Islamic focus while not majoring or minoring in MES or NES. These individuals are known as Middle East concentrators, those students who “cumulatively take 20 or more semester units of classes relating to the Middle East.”[7] The overwhelming majority of students taking courses with Middle East content are from other departments besides MES and NES; as indicated by Table 1, these students are 89 percent of those studying the Middle East and Islam, while only 11 percent of students those taking such courses originate in either MES or NES.  

 

Spanning a variety of academic fields and professional schools, Berkeley has an incredibly diverse set of options for graduate students wanting to study or specialize in the Middle East and Islam. As an example, students are free to take courses at the School of Journalism on media coverage of the Middle East, to studying Islamic law at the Boalt Hall School of Law, to say nothing of the offerings from departments in the social sciences and the humanities. The schools of Architecture, Business, Education, Engineering, Environmental Design, Journalism, Law, Public Health, Public Policy, and Library and Information Science all provide degrees “with significant Middle East (and Islam) related content.”[8]

 

While several graduate programs that offer Ph.D. degrees that provide students with the opportunity to devote some portion of their study to the Middle East and Islam, the graduate program in the Near Eastern Studies department is arguably more closely aligned with the study of the Middle East and Islam than any other department. The NES department provides various M.A. and Ph.D. programs. Similar to its broad offering for undergraduate majors, the department offers a remarkable eight specialized M.A. programs, all of which culminate in a Ph.D. Similar to other research universities, most departments in the Graduate School of Letters and Science at Berkeley do not offer stand-alone M.A. degrees; instead, the M.A. is offered on the route of a Ph.D.

 

Despite Berkeley’s emphasis on the Middle East and Islam, unlike other universities it does not offer an M.A. in MES. It does however offer an M.A. in International Studies with geographical specialization, including the Middle East. The program is only for graduate students already matriculated in another department or professional school at Berkeley.

 

Berkeley’s graduate programs are among the elite and its graduate students are some of the sharpest minds around. In the 2001-2002 academic year, the university granted Ph.D. degrees to fourteen students studying Middle East-related topics from five different departments and three professional schools (see Table 2). These fourteen graduates, and others that will follow, are among a select group of scholars studying the Middle East.

 

The breadth and depth of course offerings at Berkeley in subjects related to Islam and the Middle East is of the highest quality and affords students the chance to explore the Middle East, its religions, its cultures, its history, and its peoples in various departments and myriad disciplines. The exceptional quality of the Berkeley faculty and its treasure trove of course listings, generally allow any student to explore Islam and the Middle East through a lens and discipline of their particular interest.

The departments within the College of Letters & Science host the largest number of Middle East and Islam-related offerings. The NES department is the most natural choice, as its name indicates, but there are also other departments. The Department of Comparative Literature also offers an assortment of courses that focus on Middle Eastern literature and provide students with a cross-cultural dimension. The Department of History provides students with a wide range of courses from the advent of Islam to the modern Middle East, while offering particular specialty in the Byzantine period (Professor Mavroudi), Ottoman history (Professor Pierce), and study of both the pre-modern and modern Levant (Professor Doumani). North Africa and the Maghreb receive careful attention in the Department of Anthropology (Professors Pandolfo and Nader). For those interested in Middle East politics, the Department of Political Science[9] provides special focus on the Arabian Peninsula, Persian Gulf, Turkey, and Iraq (Professor Chaudhry).

While the Middle East and Islam receive special attention from the College of Letters & Science, this is not in exclusion of Berkeley’s professional schools; on the contrary, Berkeley’s professional schools provide unique specialization on the Middle East, respective to the school. The College of Environmental Design (CED) is one such example. The CED offers students with the opportunity to work with specialists in Middle Eastern housing, urbanism, and urban history (Professors Al Sayyad, Lifchez, and Roy). The faculty of the College of Engineering also conducts extensive research on the Middle East and often uses examples from the Middle East in student training.[10] especially in the field of Transportation Engineering (Professors Kanafani and Madanat).

 

The Boalt Hall School of Law also offers courses on law and society in the Middle East and for the past two years has provided a course on Islamic law (Dr. Bazian), as well as a course on Bible and Talmud law; a new academic journal focusing on law in the Middle East is also currently in works. The School of Journalism has a long-standing tradition of annual visiting faculty from the Middle East; most recently Mr. Hani Shukrallah, former editor of al-Ahram newspaper, is a visiting faculty member. For the past four years the School of Journalism has offered a course on media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In addition, the Schools of Social Welfare and Public Health have a broad range of courses that cover comparative welfare and public health with attention to the Middle East. In short, there is not a single school within the university that in one way or another does not offer Middle East or Islam-related coursework.

 

Typically, the study of the Middle East and Islam had been limited to students with keen and developed interest in the Middle East and Islam. This generally included students specializing in philology at both undergraduate and graduate levels and those with either intellectual or personal ties to the region. The events of September 11 permanently altered the landscape of academia. This change is seen especially in the demography and (general) makeup of courses with Middle East or Islam-related content, including language courses.

Since September 11, the enrollment in courses with a focus on the Middle East or Islam has skyrocketed. In the 2001-2002 academic year, there was a 106 percent increase from thee years ago in such courses composed of 5,103 undergraduates and 598 graduates. The university offers 147 different non-language Middle East or Islam-related courses, spanning 23 academic departments and three professional schools. The sheer breadth of these courses cover the entire Middle East, South Asia, and South Eastern Asia – in essence the geography of the Islamic world. Among the 147 courses, 86 of them – as determined by CMES – are core courses, whose entire focus (100 percent of content) is on the Middle East or Islam; the remaining 61 are have substantial related content (ranging from 25-50 percent).

Graduate students at Berkeley have among 47 graduate courses (numbered 200 or higher) to choose from when studying the Middle East. These courses are designed for the purpose of graduate training culminating in a Ph.D. These courses are smaller in nature and on average have about three students per course. According to the CMES, “Berkeley currently has 119 graduate students studying Middle East-related topics in ten departments and three professional schools (see Table 2).”[11]

 

A survey of enrollment statistics by the CMES has indicated that “there is no sharp distinction between advanced undergraduate and graduate education at Berkeley: about 38 percent of the undergraduate Middle East-related classes include graduate students, and about 31 percent  of the graduate classes include some undergraduates.”[12]

For the discerning students, and especially for graduate students, there is no study of the Middle East without knowing at least one of its languages. It comes as no surprise then, that the study of the Middle East and Islam at Berkeley is anchored in the languages of the Middle East. With this in mind, the instruction of Middle Eastern languages are firmly tied to the culture and literature contribute to developing an ability to speak the language; in contradistinction to other universities, Middle Eastern languages are taught as living, spoken languages. Given Berkeley’s emphasis on language study, all degree programs at Berkeley that are Middle East or Islam related have a mandatory language requirement.

Offered through the Department of Near Eastern Studies, Berkeley provides students with the ability to study Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Turkish at beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels; there is also specialized instruction in various Arabic dialects, Armenian, Central Asian Turkic languages, Ottoman Turkish, and Kurdish. For those interested in South Asia, Berkeley is the only university in California that offers instruction in Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, and other South Asian languages. The teaching of modern Middle Eastern languages is spearheaded by a team of experts specializing in foreign language instruction.

It should be no surprise that of all Middle East languages at Berkeley, Arabic has the highest enrollment, with 276 students in 28 classes in 2001-02 and summer 2002 (see Table 4a). From the past three years, enrollment in Arabic classes has increased by 31 percent, specifically in beginning and intermediate courses. By the Fall 2002 semester, there were record numbers of students in elementary and beginning Arabic, 92 students in elementary and 35 students in beginning Arabic. The Arabic program is led by Dr. Sonia S’Hiri, who specializes in teaching Arabic language and literature to non-natives, and previously taught at the University of Oxford. In addition to the preliminary offering of Arabic, Berkeley offers a wide array of Arabic language courses. These include: Islamic studies (Professor Algar), modern and classical literature (Professors Larkin, Siddiq and Monroe), linguistics and Classical Arabic texts (Dr. Hayes), and dialects of different parts of the Arab world (offered on a rotating basis). An important aspect of Arabic teaching at Berkeley is that Arabic is the language of instruction for classes in poetry, prose, pedagogy, linguistics, and Islamic studies; this differentiates Berkeley from other universities and provides for better training for students.

 

In the 2001-2002 academic year, Berkeley offered 19 classes in Hebrew with 118 students enrolled (see Table 4b). Hebrew enrollment in the past three years has increased marginally by 4 percent and has seen the addition of three advanced courses. Lecturer in the NES Department, Rutie Adler, who has taught Hebrew at Berkeley beginning in 1977, has been the coordinator of the Hebrew program since 1987. The instruction of Hebrew is aided by the help of a computer program called “Zeh Mah Yesh,” developed by Rutie Adler. The program works in conjunction with the faculty from Hebrew literature (Professors Alter and Kronfeld) and Biblical Hebrew (Professor Ron Hendel). Advanced courses in literature, pedagogy, and Talmud are taught in the Hebrew language at Berkeley.

Persian

Following behind Arabic, Persian has the second highest enrollment among Middle Eastern languages; for the 2001-2002 academic year there were 144 students enrolled (see Table 4b). Enrollment in Persian ranks along the highest in the U.S. Relative to Arabic, Hebrew, and Turkish, Persian had the highest increase with enrollment, increasing by 40 percent in the past three years. In the fall 2002 semester there were 103 students enrolled in beginning and intermediate Persian courses. Since 1977, the Persian language program has been led by Dr. Jaleh Pirnazar who has taught Persian language at Berkeley for the past 37 years. To better augment Persian

language at Berkeley, in 2000 the NES Department hired a tenure-track professor of Persian literature (Professor Wali Ahmadi) to teach Advanced Persian and Persian literature. Advanced students of the language can choose from Sufi texts and poetry (Prof. Algar), Classical Persian texts (Prof. Ahmadi), and Old Persian and the evolution of the Persian language (Prof. Martin Schwartz).
           

Turkish          

The past three years saw an increase of 14 percent in Turkish language enrollment; the 2001-2002 academic year saw 40 students enrolled in seven classes. The Turkish language program is coordinated by Ayla Algar who teaches all three levels of the language. In the fall 2002 semester there were twelve students in beginning Turkish, nine in intermediate, and eight in advanced Turkish. The curriculum for Turkish instruction has been designed by Algar, who has also prepared her own textbooks. She has also developed and instructed in workshops for the Western Consortium in Turkish pedagogy.

 

Recognizing the importance of study abroad, of studying a foreign language in its own environment, and interacting with students and local inhabitants, Berkeley offers various study abroad programs for its undergraduates. For students interested in studying abroad in the Middle East, Berkeley offers various options for its undergraduates.

 

Undergraduates can elect to study at the American University in Cairo (six students per year), Bilkent and Middle East Technical University (six students per year), and four universities in Israel (12 students per year). Many students have used these opportunities for undergraduate research.

 

Graduate students at Berkeley have a great deal more options for study abroad than their undergraduate counterparts. A popular study abroad destination for many graduate students is the Center for Arabic Study Abroad in Cairo (CASA), a prestigious institute based at the American University in Cairo whose alumni include numerous professors and graduate students from top American universities. Other locations for study abroad include the American Language Institute at the American University of Cairo, the Bourguiba Institute in Tunis, the Arabic Teaching Institute in Damascus, the American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT), and various other programs throughout the Middle East. Graduate students also have the opportunity to conduct independent research products with the assistance of various Middle East and Islam related academic associations which CMES is a member of, including: AIIS, AIMS, AIYS, ARCE, ARIT, and ASOR. CMES also provides its own funding for various independent research projects and travel grants.

 

Berkeley is also a founding member of the Western Consortium (established in 1984) that offers summer intensive study of Middle Eastern languages and spring semester language teacher workshops. The Consortium is composed of universities on or near the West coast that provide language instruction in Middle Eastern languages and alternate as hosts for location, including: the University of Arizona, U.C. Berkeley, U.C. Santa Barbara, U.C. Los Angeles, the University of Texas, University of Utah, and the University of Washington. Included in the program offerings are: eight weeks of intensive instruction in three levels of Arabic, two of Hebrew and Persian, and one of Turkish, plus selected non-language courses on the Middle East. Berkeley has been host to Consortium summer programs in 1995, 1997, and 2001. Recognizing the need for further language training, in the next academic year the Consortium will focus on advanced language training.

 

 

For undergraduate and graduate students desiring to study the Middle East and Islam, Berkeley remains a premier destination. Its undergraduates matriculate in the best graduate programs, and have the opportunity to work for elite private companies, think tanks, and government agencies. Berkeley’s world-class education provides its students the opportunity to study at among the world’s best academic institutions and work for extremely selective employers. A good barometer of any academic program is the opportunities it affords its students there after. In the past year, students from Berkeley’s undergraduate ME studies and NES Department, and those that took classes with Islam and ME-related content were admitted to Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Chicago, Cambridge, Georgetown, and Oxford. Many work for prestigious think tanks, law firms, investment banks, various government bodies, and intelligence agencies.

 

Graduate students from Berkeley are assets to their fields and enhance the supply of scholars of Islam and the Middle East. Graduate placement data is a good indicator of the quality of graduate student training. An employment survey by the CMES shows that of 265 Ph.D. recipients from 1974 through 2002, 69.8 percent (185) were employed at academic institutions. In recent years many graduates have opted for governmental service, business, and alternative professions. Most significantly, more than 90 percent of Ph.D.s were using skills acquired at Berkeley in the fields of Islam and Middle East studies acquired at Berkeley.

 

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