Our Mission

The Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race is dedicated to the study of ethnic hierarchy in our social and knowledge worlds. It fosters creative intervention in this field, both in the form of community involvement and as scholarly and artistic accomplishment within the Columbia community.

The Center is an interdisciplinary space that has a pedagogical mission at the undergraduate level and a research mission for undergraduates, graduate students and faculty. It was founded in response to a student movement that called for activist intervention in teaching and learning, and recognition of the minority presence within the Columbia community. These beginnings matured into a teaching and research mission that favors socially pertinent work and a keen engagement in a politics of recognition.

CSER’s signature mark is what might be termed “peripheral vision,” a viewpoint that privileges the analysis of contemporary and historical social formations from the perspective of minoritized social groups. “Peripheral vision” begins at home, but is in no way confined to it. From its inception, CSER has been committed to the study of racialization and minoritization in the United States: it has shaped a curriculum and promoted the scholarly presence of Asian American Studies and Latino Studies; it has collaborated with Columbia’s Institute for Research on African American Studies in order to build a rich and diverse program for students of color; it is involved in helping the university take stock of its attention to Native American Studies. CSER is, in short, a space that has been adopted fondly by students of color as a forum that is open to their pedagogical interests.

CSER is equally committed to a world-historical approach to the study of ethnicity and race, and especially to an analysis of globalization. Ethnic differentiation, stratification and racism have been central to the history of the modern world system. Racial hierarchies were punctiliously developed in colonial empires; strong ties of ethnic identification were promoted in the development of long-distance trade networks and labor migrations. Today the movement of labor and capital in the international system has generated strains and fissures within national societies the world over. These concerns are developed in CSER’s Comparative Ethnic Studies major, in its emphasis on globalization in American Studies, and in its roster of speakers and activities.

The Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race works in close proximity to the Institute for Research on African American Studies (IRAAS) and to the Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWaG), it also coordinates programming and activities with the American Studies Program, the Institute for Latin American Studies, the Institute for East Asian Studies, and the Institute for Middle Eastern Languages and Civilizations.