Save Arabic Without Walls: About

On March 20, 2008, the Daily Californian reported that the award-winning distance-learning Arabic course, Arabic Without Walls, developed at UC Berkeley by Arabic language program director Sonia S'hiri, was to be cancelled by the Department.

According to the story, Department of Near Eastern Studies Chair Carol Redmount claimed that the program "does not benefit UC Berkeley students," and that it "took resources away from our own Arabic program that we thought should be devoted to Berkeley students."

As students at UC Berkeley who have matriculated through the NES Program, taken Arabic courses, or are currently enrolled in Arabic courses, we question the Department's decision, as well as claims that the Arabic program at Cal is suffering due to the Arabic Without Walls program. If anything, we believe that the program has enhanced our own experience as well as expanded the resources available to us to improve our acquisition of the Arabic language.

We are not alone in this judgment. In 2003, the University of California proudly announced the beginning of the Arabic Without Walls program, which took four years of careful development before it began enrolling students in Fall 2007. At the time, the US Department of Education awarded the University with a $452,600 grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education, bringing together respected and accomplished experts from the UC Consortium for Language Learning & Teaching and the National Middle East Language Resource Center at Brigham Young University to collaborate on the program.

Recognizing the importance of this program, as well as the immense loss this is to the Berkeley campus, we have come together to organize an on-line and printed petition requesting that the online-course be re-instated. Further, we have initiated an e-mail action campaign to convince the Department that Berkeley students are proud to be in one of the strongest Arabic programs in the country, and at the same time at the center of innovative learning technologies.

Please consider signing the petition by clicking here, or sending e-mail actions at this page.