http://www.change.org/petitions/view/tell_chancellor_birgeneau_to_stop_attacking_ethnic_studies
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 11, 2010
Press contacts: Steve Woo, UCB, 2007, woo.stephan@gmail.com
Liz Del Sol, UCB 1972, lizdelsol@gmail.com
ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES AT UC BERKELEY ON THE CHOPPING BLOCK. CHANCELLOR’S OFFICE PRESSING TO DISSOLVE ASIAN AMERICAN, CHICANO, AND NATIVE-AMERICAN STUDIES MAJORS INTO ONE ETHNIC STUDIES MAJOR.
Berkeley Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Alumni Chapter calls on the Chancellor to stop the cutbacks. Hands off the existing Ethnic Studies Majors. We support the right to relevant education for all communities and people. After decades of University-led attacks on the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, the Chancellor’s office, led by Executive Vice Chancellor, George Breslauer, and Vice Provost, Catherine Koshland, are extending the assault, this time in an effort to discontinue Asian American, Chicano, and Native American Studies undergraduate majors. The Chancellor’s Office is currently pressing these three programs to consolidate under one Ethnic Studies major, thereby eliminating the ability for students to independently major or minor in ethnic specific fields.
We view this action as an effort to reduce the infrastructure of the Ethnic Studies Department, which has had a tenuous relationship with the University ever since its creation out of the 1969 Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) strike, a student-led movement to create relevant programs for communities of color. We further view the Chancellor’s efforts as an attempt to weaken the Ethnic Studies program at UC Berkeley, one of the University’s few forms of community-based education led by and about peoples of color.
The Chancellor’s Office claims that an external review team, appointed to examine the structure and governance of the Department, recommended the closure of these three majors. However, we find the external review team’s recommendations to be imprecise about its solutions and is open to interpretation. The Chancellor’s Office has decided to loosely interpret the recommendations made in order to serve the University’s decades-long agenda of diminishing the Department of Ethnic Studies.
Historically, these studies focused upon community needs and other concerns that have been erased or long neglected. The programs need increased support and reaffirmation, not closure.
The Berkeley AAPI Alumni Chapter calls on the Chancellor’s Office to:
1. Respect the autonomy of the Asian American Studies, Chicano Studies, and Native American Studies programs
2. Retract its demands to close the Asian American Studies, Chicano Studies, and Native American Studies major programs
3. Increase its commitment to a vital and growing department by immediately providing adequate resources such as teaching space and funding for more full-time employees and teaching staff.
The Berkeley AAPI Alumni Chapter is comprised of hundreds of members and supporters who are active in the Asian American community today and were trained to become community organizers, civil rights attorneys, healthcare professionals and activists who were recipients of Asian American Studies courses when they were in college. We intend to take this issue to our entire membership. # # #
