Colleges act to moderate students’ debates on war, terrorism

ANN GRIMES

AT A recent noon-hour fair of student organizations at the University of California, Berkeley, a group of fraternity brothers pitched baseballs that dunked a coed into a pool and raised money for the World Trade Center relief fund.

A few yards away, Hooma Multani sat at the Muslim Students Association’s table. The Los Angeles senior distributed fliers criticizing reports by some US media in the days after September 11 that wrongly identified at least four pilots of Middle Eastern descent as likely hijackers. ‘‘I’m having a bad hijab day,’’ Multani said, referring to her gray head scarf. ‘‘It’s worse than having a bad hair day.’’

After years of encouraging diversity in admissions and curricula, universities are now faced with this modern-day conundrum: how to keep peace on campus among young people whose views about the US war on terrorism fall all over the map. Already tensions have resulted in arrests at Berkeley and heightened security at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where some Muslim students say they received hostile e-mail messages soon after the September 11 attacks.

Meanwhile, diversity in political thought means rallies on many campuses have devolved into heated exchanges between ‘‘hawks’’ and ‘‘doves.’’

‘‘It’s tense and it’s going to continue to be tense,’’ says Berkeley’s dean of students, Karen Kenney. She says she has had to pull student leaders aside ‘‘to remind them the importance of civil exchange’’ and ‘‘help advise them to continue the dialogue.’’

As college campuses grow more politically aware, administrators like Kenney are taking a page from an earlier era, reaching out to students and organizing rallies and teach-ins as a way to ensure the diverse campuses they have worked so hard to create don’t become polarized. Unlike teach-ins of yore, mounted as student protests against the ‘‘establishment,’’ it’s the university often doing the organizing.

Within days of the World Trade Center attacks, Berkeley lecturer Hatem Bazian coordinated a campus teach-in about Islam. The event was rapidly organized, he says, to ensure that ‘‘students didn’t seek alternatives that will be detrimental to the well-being of the university.’’ Hundreds of students attended, he says, watched over by campus police.

‘‘Most people are feeling frightened and they are choosing to go different ways with that,’’ says Joseph Harrison, a Berkeley senior who also helped organize campus events. ‘‘Some are terrified their civil liberties will be lost, others are frightened of another terrorist attack.’’ The result: ‘‘People just spout off.’’

Faculty and administrators throughout the country say they moved quickly to tap campus experts on religion, history and politics because students were hungry to understand. To ensure that all voices on campus get heard, Michigan, among other large universities, has procedures that specify the times and location of rallies so that classes aren’t disrupted. ‘‘Our university is incredibly diverse,’’ says Michigan spokeswoman Diane Brown. ‘‘We want to insure that while we are maintaining First Amendment rights, we’re not letting one group dominate another.’’ But some students say that school sponsorship of discussions thwarts meaningful exchange. — LATWP