By Prof. Gonzalo Santos, July 22, 2020
After the CSU Academic Senates (systemwide and campus-by-campus) and the CSU Board of Trustees both dragged their feet for decades, especially in the past 5 years of active mobilization by faculty and students of color in the system and in major campuses to approve and implement a mandatory ethnic studies requirement, progressive and legislators of color introduced AB 1460, a bill that would mandate such a requirement.
So as not to dilute the requirement – as usually has happened with “Diversity” and “Social Justice” requirements – the bill specifically calls for all students to take one 3-credit course to graduate focused on Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans and Latina and Latino Americans.
There has been for years resistance to the idea in general by the system’s academic and administrative bureaucracy – though it has been resolutely championed by the systemwide faculty union, CFA – of which I am a proud member and by most student bodies. But when it seemed that the requirement was inevitable or imminent, the institutional resistance has yielded and the tactic of blocking has switched to diluting and broadening the requirement to include any course on gender studies, LGBTQ studies, and other topics deemed part of a curriculum of “Social Justice”.
The idea for years has been to come up with a scheme to side-step requiring all students from taking a course on the four pan ethnicities of color specified in Assemblywoman Shirley Weber’s AB 1460, and instead, in the name of choice and fairness, broaden the requirement so as to make it weak and ineffective in achieving the objective sought – which is to teach all CSU students the history, culture and contributions of the peoples of color who have long been marginalized, ignored, and discriminated in both the CSU undergraduate curriculum and in society at large.
You might say I am exaggerating using words like “diluting” and “side-stepping”, but let me illustrate with my own campus case.
When I joined CSUB in 1992, one of its attractions for me was the existence of a “Gender/Race & Ethnic Relations” graduation requirement, the so-called “GRE”. I taught the very popular survey Sociology course “Race and Ethnic Relations”, which fulfilled that requirement, and developed new ones, like “The Latino [Indigenous/African American/Asian American] Experiences in the United States.”
All out of Sociology. I then proposed to develop a full-blown Ethnic Studies department, as some CSU campuses had done since the late 1960s. That went nowhere with my mostly white colleagues and administrators, including a Chicano president leading CSUB at the time, Dr. Tomás Arciniega.
It was seen as a “zero-sum” proposition that would take funding from traditional departments. But as a compromise, my senior colleagues suggested, and I (still untenured) accepted, a “Race & Ethnic Relations” concentration (equivalent to a Minor) within the Major of Sociology. That allowed me to develop and teach the courses I mentioned. But no other department did that (there were extremely few Latino and Black faculty), though some departments offered courses that met the popular GRE and accrued enrollment credit for their own funding. “Diversity” became the Shibboleth, and the few ethnic studies “Minors” listed in the catalogue remained essentially token, unfunded, “paper programs” to look good for accreditation purposes. The only exposure to ethnic studies, then, was through the GRE.
But then, in one of the rounds to revise the General Education Requirements, the GRE requirement was taken out altogether!
I single-handedly beat back previous attempts by my colleagues to take it out, as the climate of our society turned more conservative and hostile in the so-called “Culture Wars,” but finally lost, during times of furloughs and CSU fiscal crisis. So, for many years most students at large have graduated from CSUB without having taken a single ethnic studies course.
Then, about five years ago, prodded by the insurrection of students and faculty in San Francisco State against attempts to abolish their School of Ethnic Studies, the flag ethnic program in the system, as well as similar protests in other major campuses, the system responded (administrators and Academic Senates) with a blue-ribbon panel, headed by our own CSUB president, Horace Mitchell, to seek ways to affirm and advance ethnic studies systemwide.
The result was an impressive report. But in our campus it just led to more tokenism: the establishment of a so-called “Interdisciplinary Major,” within which those students that chose that major could take courses in Women Studies, LGBTQ studies, other diversity studies, and oh, yes, ethnic studies.
So even in that reduced universe of students, even those could graduate without having taken a single ethnic studies course! Talk about marginalizing ethnic studies in the name of “diversity” and “equity”
In summary, as a result of the persistent, stubborn institutional resistance in the CSU system – the largest in the nation – to grant proper recognition to the need and legitimacy to require all its graduating students to learn something – at least a course! -about our Latino/a, African American, Indigenous, and Asian American peoples in the United States, there has been rampant tokenism, programmatic regression and blockage, a minimizing of curricular offerings – and when finally mandated as a requirement, a broadening and dilution of it so as to render it ineffective for meeting its stated purpose.
That’s WHY, our legislators are now at the verge of mandating a REAL ethnic studies requirement on the CSU system – again, with the overwhelming support of faculty and students of color, and my faculty union. I can’t say the same of many of my white colleagues and administrators, but hopefully they will come around.
But not without the CSU coming out with one last trick up its sleeve.
The two approaches are coming to a head now. AB 1460, the narrowly constructed ethnic studies mandate to require CSU students a course focused on the four pan ethnic communities of color is about to pass the California legislature and be sent to the governor to sign into law. And also, today, the Board of Trustees of the CSU system meets to consider approving the university’s long-delayed, broadly constructed, “Ethnic Studies and Social Justice requirement.”
It’s predictable they will pass it.
The insidious politics of it is that if both pass, and although the AB 1460 law would supersede the trustees’ own approved program, it can give political cover for the governor to veto the legislation arguing, in the name of academic freedom, non-interference with the CSU’s own measure, and even in name of equity with other deserving communities of interest, such as the Jewish, Muslim, women, LGBTQ, communities.
The answer to that, of course, is that if the state and the university see an equally compelling need for requiring a course on such other communities worthy of study, on par with the historically oppressed and disadvantaged panethnic communities in the ethnic studies law, they should add and budget for such requirements on top of the ethnic studies requirement – but not AT THE EXPENSE of what most faculty and students of color consider is the minimum commitment to the study of our own communities, our history, our contributions, and our present challenges.
What do you think?
ARTICLE: California State University eyes ethnic studies requirement
https://apnews.com/86784fc73902932ffb8903b0f58d4537
