Jamie Chen

t was the beginning of November. Student groups concerned with issues of race and power affecting life both off and on-campus were growing increasingly agitated by what they perceived to be a stalwart administration that would not budge on an issue of particular, personal significance for many students involved: ethnic studies classes on campus. Students make a critical decision: if the administration was not going to budge, they would strike until their demands were met.

Not Columbia’s campus before last semester’s hunger strike, but San Francisco State University in 1968, where students began the longest student strike in the history of the nation and the first for ethnic studies. Thousands of students refused to attend classes, members of the American Federation of Teachers refused to teach, and the campus erupted in a series of rallies that often resulted in violence and arrests. Finally, on March 5, AFT members returned to work and the School of Ethnic Studies was established on campus.

Strikes across the nation, including another famous strike at the University of California-Berkeley that same year, were held as students demanded ethnic studies classes and the ability to study issues of race in the history and social formation of the United States in their schools. Such dema n d s challenged traditional curriculum that often ignored the contributions of communities of color, as well as their legal, social, and political marginalization throughout United States history.

A little less than thirty years later, in 1996, students on Columbia’s campus went on a hunger strike to bring ethnic studies to campus, resulting in the creation of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race (CSER). As the turbulent genesis of the arrival of ethnic studies on American campuses shows quite clearly, students have historically taken the initiative in establishing ethnic studies centers and departments in their schools, and have fought for the right to retain a level of direct involvement.

Following this tradition, as CSER undergoes its Academic Review this year, students form an integral part of the process. A student subcommittee, comprised of five students from Columbia and Barnard either majoring within the Center or interested in the fate of CSER on a personal level, has taken on the responsibility of facilitating student involvement in the process.

The Academic Review process is a routine practice undergone by all departments, institutes, and centers on campus periodically, and occurs in two parts: self-study and an external review. The self-study are meant for “critical self-review” and reevaluation of “long-range planning assumptions and goals,” according to the CU Faculty of Arts and Sciences webpage. The external review is taken on by the fifteen members who comprise the Academic Review Committee (ARC). Both faculty and administrators sit on this committee and it is this committee who oversees the entire review process. Students will only be able to participate in the self-study of CSER, though typically the Center, Institute, or Department in question steps out of the process at this point. The fact that all faculty members, with the exception of the one representative from the Department of Arts, must be tenured in order to serve on this committee, however, automatically precludes places like CSER or the Institute on the Research of Women and Gender. As Centers and Institutes, these academic nodes do not have hiring power, and in fact must even pay their affiliated faculty through another department’s budget. With this diminished power comes the inability to offer any tenured positions Ð then, obviously leading to the problem that no exclusively ethnic scholars or women’s studies faculty would sit on the ARC, as they would be necessity be tied to another department.

However, with the ARC comes the opportunity to prove one’s academic worthiness, an issue still faced by the much-derided field of ethnic studies. And with CSER, the self-study provides a unique opportunity for student input in an academic system where it is the norm that the votes of the student chairs on committees with any kind of influence or power within the university would not be counted in decision-making. Because CSER’s charter explicitly demands student involvement in the facility and direction of the Center, the self-study calls for direct student participation.

The students who are a part of the CSER Self-study Subcommittee are distributing an in-depth survey for ethnic studies majors or those interested to gage student sentiment on crucial issues. The hope is that majors will feel more invested in the future of the Center, and think critically about their engagement with ethnic studies, be they academic or otherwise (after all, ethnic studies is meant to be an organic pairing of theory and activism, with one’s studies directly feeding into political activities in the community).

However, while student participation exists at all levels of CSER’s operations, from self-studies to faculty searches to long-term planning, the fact still stands that CSER continues to be treated how students in other areas of university planning are treated — as though their voices did not count. Ultimately, the department that would be making the hire has all the power to make their own decision; there is no reason for them to put the Center’s interests in hiring a specific scholar in front of their own relevant needs.

The ARC does not need to address the difficulties inherent in being a Center in terms of faculty hiring and giving tenure (neither of these actions being afforded to Centers, part of the reason why the 1996 hunger strike fought specifically for a department), and any suggestions for upgrading CSER’s status.

With a limited voice and even less influence in the bureaucratic operations of this university, Centers and Institutes cannot be relied on to effect the quickest or most necessary changes in their relationship with the university. Students should take part in bureaucratic processes, but also search for creative ways to improve them, as well as hold others accountable for what is provided for in such processes.