Admission to the Islamic Studies program was frozen by the Academic Senate in 2008.
And two years later, nothing about that has changed.
The graduate and undergraduate students who benefit from the program should not be forced to wait in administrative limbo while the fate of what truly is their department is decided and shaped ““ or maybe even forgotten.
In response to graduate students’ concerns about irrelevant curriculum and lack of support, an external review committee made a number of recommendations to restructure and update the program, temporarily freezing admissions.
The program has since hired a new chair, Professor Khaled Abou El Fadl, who has worked to restructure the curriculum and administrative oversight. Yet, nothing has been done to restore the program.
Students lobbied to the administration last week to hasten the process of unfreezing admissions, or at least give an estimate of when the program would be restored. Still, no response.
This is not the first time there have been issues with academic structure, content and logistics in interdepartmental programs like Islamic Studies. Just last year, admissions to International Development Studies were frozen for similar reasons.
Interdepartmental programs have no faculty members devoted full-time to the department, and it is often difficult for students to enroll in classes. The programs offer fields of study that academic departments cannot provide alone, and these IDPs are essential to maintaining students’ opportunities to have a broad range of fields to explore.
The lack of a central figure concerned with the program leads to the loss of a cohesive academic experience. This board stands behind the decision to freeze admissions with the goal of improving the program and giving the students in the program what they want: support. But allowing Islamic Studies to slip through the cracks as students graduate, leaving it on life support with only 12 graduates now enrolled, is absolutely unacceptable.
Cutting the small program chips away at the last remaining resources students who are interested in a recently diminished undergraduate Islamic studies program have at their disposal.
We often forget the importance of graduate students in undergraduate education. Graduate students are many people’s teachers and mentors. Without them, especially now, many of the classes UCLA offers would not exist.
Specific to Islamic Studies, the shrinking pool of graduate students makes teaching undergraduate courses almost impossible.
Campus leadership needs to step in and take charge of restructuring and unfreezing the Islamic Studies program.
Unsigned editorials represent the majority opinion of the editorial board.