Cleaver to Teach At U.C. Berkeley

Meeting late last night, the Faculty Senate at U.C. Berkeley passed six resolutions backing Eldridge Cleaver's appointment as lecturer in an experimental course on racism.

By a 658-114 vote, the faculty approved the key proposal--Resolution 5--urging the organizers of the Cleaver course "to carry on the process of instruction, on campus...or off-campus."

The resolution, however, failed to recommend immediate credit status for the course. Instead, it proposed that the U.C. Committee on Courses "take all appropriate steps to obtain credit for the course."

Fierce debate flared during the meeting over the meaning of "all appropriate steps." In a pamphlet called "Disguised Cop-Out," students had complained that such "purposefully ambiguous" phrasing could be used "to conceal a faculty cop-out." Student rallies this week at Berkeley have demanded that the faculty ask for immediate credit for the course.

In a rare appearance at a faculty meeting, U.C. President Charles Hitch had said that "appropriate steps" did not constitute a break with the Regents' decision. Hitch had urged the faculty to take no concrete steps.

Two amendments to Resolution 5--one offered by liberal professors asking for immediate credit, and one by conservatives asking that the entire resolution be deleted--were both defeated easily.

The five other resolutions all blasted the Regents for their decision last month to reject Cleaver's appointment and to destroy the Board of Educational Development (BED)--the faculty committee that had created the Cleaver course. By their "hasty and ill considered action," the resolutions said, the Regent had "abolished academic freedom" at Berkeley.

After the meeting, several professors made it clear that the faculty action "was based on principle, not personality." Most faculty members said they were objecting to the incursion on the BED's rights, and not on Cleaver's specific merits as lecturer.

"No one is too happy about Eldridge," a history professor said last night. "When you stage a Dreyfus case, you have to be sure your Dreyfus is innocent.