Ethnic Studies Policy Criticized

Continuing its push for ethnic studies, the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations hosted a lecturer on Chicano Studies yesterday who criticized Harvard’s lack of an ethnic studies program as “untenable.”

Foundation Director S. Allen Counter introduced Yolanda Broyles-Gonzalez, professor of Chicano Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara, by stressing the need for an ethnic studies program at Harvard.

“There is no greater need at Harvard than the expansion of the ethnic studies program,” Counter said.

Students can currently take courses related to ethnicity within the departments, although there is no formal program. That may change this year if a proposal for a certificate program, drawn up by a Foundation subcommittee last spring, is approved.

In her hour-long address to 15 students in the Quincy House Junior Common Room, Broyles-Gonzalez championed the creation of ethnic studies programs and criticized what she said was reluctance by universities to see ethnic studies as legitimate.

She said universities were “masters’ houses” within which ethnic studies occupied the maid’s quarters 30 years ago. Now, she said, ethnic studies is a “misunderstood and unwelcome guest” in the guest bedroom, a position gained only by dint of student unrest.

“To my knowledge, no university has ever rolled out a red carpet for ethnic studies,” Broyles-Gonzalez said. “Ethnic studies has had to face closed doors and fearful, unwilling administrators.”

She recounted tales of student hunger strikes and sit-ins for the creation of ethnic studies departments, reminding students that Harvard had created the Afro-American Studies Department only after considerable student unrest in the 1960s.

She pointed to Harvard’s ethnic studies website as evidence of the University’s reluctance to formalize a program of study, saying its tone departs markedly from the websites of other departments.

“There are no genteel words of welcome..ethnic studies is described as a would-be intruder in the master’s house,” said Broyles-Gonzalez, pointing to words like “impose,” “coerce,” “misguided” and “cautions”on the website’s description of ethnic studies.

Rapidly changing demographics alone should cause universities to rethink their approach to race, Broyles-Gonazlez said, pointing to United States Census data projecting that whites will be minorities by 2050 and that Hispanics will be the largest group, numerically.

She advocated the establishment of ethnic studies programs and said that if the field continued to be ignored, departments that singled out certain areas of study—like Afro-American Studies—should be dismantled.

In response to student questions about how to best effect change, Broyles-Gonzalez advocated student civil disobidence, saying that only those efforts have proved successful.

“Sometimes people’s minds don’t change until they start to feel uncomfortable,” Broyles-Gonzalez said. “Students, unfortunately, historically have been the ones who have had to do that...I don’t think business as usual is going to produce change at these universities.”

Ethan Y. Yeh ’03, chair of the Academic Affairs Committee, the subcommittee of the Foundation that proposed the certificate program, said he found the historical perspective presented to be most useful.

“She did a good job of going through the history of different ethnic studies movements across the country,” Yeh said. “It was interesting that with some departments even, students had to take further initiative to get [ethnic studies] institutionalized.”

Yesterday’s lecture, which was also sponsored by RAZA, was followed by a luncheon and a book reading by Broyles-Gonzalez. It comes on the heels of complaints by some students on what they say is the slow, closed nature of deliberations on the certificate proposal by the Faculty Committee on Ethnic Studies (CES).

CES Chair Werner Sollors, professor of Afro-American Studies, has created the post of student liasion on the committee, although the liasion will not be a student on the Academic Affairs Committee, as some students had hoped. Instead, the liasion will be a student currently writing a thesis on ethnic studies or otherwise studying ethnic studies.

Sollors said earlier that he expects CES to come to a decision regarding the certificate proposal by the end of this school year.

—Staff writer Juliet J. Chung can be reached at jchung@fas.harvard.edu.