The Rise and Fall of Ethnic Studies

Thirty years after its founding, the Afro-American studies department has become one of the best in the nation--an unexpected feat, considering its controversial creation.

The department's inception represented a major coup for student activists, whose reforms rode a wave of enthusiasm for change that transformed much of the University.

In succeeding decades, students at Harvard and across the nation broadened their protest to include a call for ethnic studies departments, institutional structures to support the study of the various ethnicities that make up our national population.

But in spite of a major nationwide push in 1995, the movement for an ethnic studies department at Harvard has stalled.

In May of that year, students on the Academic Affairs Committee of the Harvard Foundation for Race and Intercultural Relations completed a comprehensive report advocating the creation of an ethnic studies concentration.

But Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles and then-chair of the committee on ethnic studies, Jorge Dominguez, responded with a letter saying "[t]he creation of narrowly-defined administrative or curricular entities in the FAS would be misguided."

Today, only a handful of students and scholars are interested in fighting for ethnic studies as a department. Others claim the study of American ethnicity should take place within existing disciplines.

Harvard now boasts a Latino Studies Initiative and a South Asian Studies Initiative, among other groups, but the goals of these groups are different, and those who support ethnic studies no longer present a united front.

The Last Great Push

In 1995, the ethnic studies movement attracted thousands of college students across the country. Harvard was no exception.

At the time, two student groups stood out in the fight for ethnic studies. One was the Ethnic Studies Action Committee (ESAC), a grassroots organization. The other was the group responsible for the 1995 concentration proposal--the Harvard Foundation's Academic Affairs Committee (AAC), which worked toward its goal by operating within the system.

After the 1995 effort petered out, the movement had a two-year lull. But then, in 1997, Michael K.T. Tan '01 and Nancy G. Lin '99-'00 decided they wanted to organize a revival. They worked on the Academic Affairs Committee to do so.

But one of Harvard's points of pride, its decentralization, became their main obstacle and was one of many factors eventually causing their effort to peter out, Tan said.

They paired concentrators with their departments, but Tan says it was a challenge for the students to familiarize themselves with individual department budgets, internal politics and individuals. And because there are so many departments, it was an even more daunting task.

"Everyone passes the buck," Tan says.

Tan adds he thinks it is more difficult to mobilize students around academic issues. Harvard's system and hiring practices make it difficult for students unaided by faculty or administrators to accomplish change.

"It's not like a public university, where there's that sort of accountability," Tan says.

The social studies and women's studies concentrations partly owe their existence to faculty support, Tan says.

"Social studies happened and women's studies happened because faculty came together," he says.

In addition to decentralization, another factor was Lin's leave of absence in the fall of 1998. Nisha S. Agarwal '00 says the movement declined after Lin's absence.

"When Nancy left, the movement died away with her," Agarwal says.

Lin became involved in the movement when she heard about ESAC as a sophomore. She became heavily involved with the Academic Affairs Committee in the spring of 1998. She says that although the movement struck a positive chord with many students, "it takes more than support to run an organization."

She says it is hard for ethnic studies to be the basis for a broad-based movement, since it is more esoteric than other causes and sometimes difficult to explain to faculty and students.

"Students have different ideas about what they want," she says.

Ethnic studies as a concentration, a department, a committee and general course offerings were among the options. Differences of opinion on strategies cropped up as well. Lin says she wants students to be able to pursue their academic interests without having to resort to strategies such as independent study or other alternative resources.

"The support structure doesn't exist," she says.

Agarwal is the founder of the South Asian Studies Initiative (SASI), which began around the same time that Lin was trying to move ethnic studies back into the spotlight.

SASI sometimes collaborated with the Academic Affairs Committee, although its aims are somewhat different, Agarwal said. SASI works for South Asian regional studies, not South Asian-American studies. But Agarwal, too, thinks it is difficult to organize students behind academic issues.

"Student activism in general is hard to get on Harvard's campus," she says. "It's unfortunate that the [ethnic studies] movement has been so sporadic... [There's] a whole host of issues that the University is ignoring."

A Different Time, A Different Place

The activism that gave rise to the Afro-American Studies Department 30 years ago was very different from current movements, says Admissions Officer David L. Evans.

The number of black students in the College increased dramatically in the 1960s--and the nature of activism, particularly college activism, was very different, says Evans, who is now also a member of the Faculty Advisory Committee of the Harvard Foundation.

He recalls 1960s-era Harvard Square as a place bustling with activism. By contrast, he remembers only one protest in recent memory.

"Where have they been?" he asks. "In the old days, there used to be 25 or 30 groups out there."

College activism waxes and wanes in cycles. Ethnic studies is hardly alone as a movement at a low point. And politics, Evans says, is definitely an influence.

"Everybody from the lowest...to the highest is influenced from outside politics," Evans says. "The country is not politically active right now. Everybody is trying to become another Bill Gates."

In 1969, students were more committed to their various causes. That year saw an unusual spike in the number of protests.

At Harvard, some of these events led to the establishment of what would eventually become one of most lauded African-American studies departments in the country.

Today, their professors are known as an academic "Dream Team," featuring many prominent scholars, including W.E.B. DuBois Professor of the Humanities Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Alphonse Fletcher Jr University Professor Cornel R. West '74.

Henry Rosovosky, who was then a professor of economics and would later be dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, chaired the faculty committee that recommended Afro-American studies become an interdisciplinary program.

"During the upheavals of that year, turning this interdisciplinary program into a department became one of the demands," Rosovsky said. "Eventually the Faculty changed its original vote and voted to create a department."

Originally, Rosovsky said, he did not support the Faculty's switch. However, once the decision was made, "all of us involved worked very hard to make it a successful department...

"It went through a very troubled and difficult history...It took a long time for it to become the tremendous success that it is today."

Integration

Today, proponents and detractors of an ethnic studies department seldom debate whether or not the subject should be addressed--the main point of contention is how.

Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures Doris Sommer, co-chair of the ethnic studies committee, says she is concerned that ethnicity be considered a general concern rather than a particular issue. She adds that students need to understand that ethnic studies are embedded within the disciplines that they are already studying.

"Ethnic studies is an integral part of what we do in many disciplines," Sommer says.

"I and several colleagues are looking forward more to seeing the attention to ethnicity...attended to in regular courses than we are in seeing ethnic studies sectioned off as an area independent of regular courses," she adds.

"Administratively, there's an enormous difference. What does the presence of Hispanic people do to departments in English and Spanish? It's a different question than building a department around Hispanic people," Sommer says.

The Latino Studies Initiative, Sommer says, is working to "introduce the University to distinguished professors in a range of disciplines that engage in Latino studies."

Others say part of the difficulty in establishing how to study ethnicity is that the word itself is constantly evolving.

Evans says the discussion might be helped by a sharper definition.

"Ethnicity each day assumes a different face," he says. "I would like to see [ethnic studies]. I think the problem is that they are dealing with something here that is loosely defined and is being redefined almost every third day.

"You cannot take a term like ethnic studies and easily throw it about," Evans adds.

One issue is that many groups are redefining and subdividing. Evans gave the example of black student groups.

"In the old days, if you looked at someone and they looked like they were from Africa, there was the all-encompassing term 'black.' That is no more," Evans says.

Originally Harvard had one black student organization. Then subgroups formed--an African association and a Carribean club among them.

"Somebody in the larger group felt that he or she could be more distinctly defined," he says. "This isn't a harsh criticism. It's a comment...Where does it stop? When do you pool your resources and ally your forces? Even if someone wanted to establish [ethnic studies], is it practical to include all of the groups that have emerged?

"Everybody at Harvard is ethnic. No group is over 50 percent...When you say ethnic studies...almost everybody feels that he or she is [part of] an ethnic group."

This doesn't necessarily preclude an ethnic studies apartment, Evans says.

"[But] it isn't as simple to put it there."

Tan says that although in theory, he understands the arguments against ethnic studies as a department, right now, "American studies doesn't cut it."

He calls the ethnic studies visiting professor program "great." But it's not enough, Tan says.

"It's icing on a cake that doesn't exist."