Below is a letter from Constance Penley, on behalf of the Council of UC Faculty Associations, to Professor Madeleine Sorapure, Chair of the UC Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools, in support of the UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council-authored UC A-G Ethnic Studies requirement.
June 6, 2022
Madeleine Sorapure, Chair
UC Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools
Via email.
Dear Chair Sorapure,
The Council of UC Faculty Associations (CUCFA) supports the UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council-authored UC A-G ethnic studies requirement (a subject requirement for admission to the UC system). We share their concern about a disturbing, recent development that suggests political interference in the faculty right to develop curriculum. We believe that recent abrupt shifts in course content betray student demands for an A-G ethnic studies requirement and potentially reflect irregularities in the process.
CUCFA joins nearly 1,300 faculty, administrators, and students who have signed a statement of support for the UC A-G ethnic studies course criteria that the UC Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS)-appointed ethnic studies specialists crafted and BOARS initially approved. The list of signatories includes the National Association for Multicultural Education, the California Alliance of Researchers for Equity in Education, chapters of the Association of Raza Educators, a range of UC departments, and the 19,000-strong UAW 2865 graduate student union. It reads as a roster of major ethnic studies scholars throughout the state and beyond. It speaks volumes about the support for ethnic studies both inside and outside the UC system.
The following is a brief timeline of the issue compiled by the UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council:
- In October 2021, Assembly Bill 101 was signed in California, requiring that ethnic studies be offered in high school by the 2025-26 school year and become a graduation requirement by 2030. In November 2020, in response to advocacy from the UC Student Assembly, which represents 285,000 students, the UC Academic Senate and UC Board of Regents approved a resolution expanding the A-G admissions requirements to include a one-semester ethnic studies course. The UC Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS) then convened a workgroup of twenty ethnic studies specialists to articulate the course criteria.
- On May 12, 2022, BOARS chair Madeleine Sorapure notified the UC-appointed members of the writing team (a subset of the larger workgroup) that developed, drafted, and revised the course criteria for the UC A-G ethnic studies requirement that the UC would instead be taking a “broader approach to include diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice courses.” The fact that BOARS blocked the members of the writing team from taking part in the May 6, 2022 BOARS meeting meant that no expert in ethnic studies was present at a consequential discussion that resulted in this reckless reversal of course.
Disturbingly, at that May 6 meeting, despite having previously approved the draft criteria, BOARS decided to allow racist and reactionary external pressure—including letters and petitions against ethnic studies—to inform their deliberative process. This abrupt shift from ethnic studies-specific course criteria to “DEI/social justice” is unconscionable since BOARS had unanimously approved an explicitly ethnic studies A-G requirement in late 2020. This new watered-down focus on “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) courses betrays student demands for a UC A-G ethnic studies requirement. It fails to align with California’s mandated ethnic studies high school requirement. Anti-ethnic studies organizations have boasted to the media that they were “successful in stalling the ethnic studies requirement” through interference in the deliberative process.
Although a UC A-G ethnic studies requirement will advance UC’s diversity, equity, and inclusion goals, “DEI” is a corporate buzzword that is aimed, in top-down fashion, at managing diversity in institutional settings. It is not, nor has it ever been, a curriculum. Unlike ethnic studies as a field that emerged from grassroots struggles to democratize education for Native peoples and communities of color who have long been sidelined in traditional curricula, DEI does not center their lived experiences, epistemologies, and struggles within and against systems of colonialism and racism. It is not backed by research like ethnic studies, which has been empirically shown to improve all students’ academic achievement and social relations. Simply put, DEI is not a field of study.
Like other A-G requirements, the UC ethnic studies requirement–and course criteria–must be driven by scholars, teacher-practitioners, and experts within the field. In this sensitive juncture in which it appears that the A-G ethnic studies requirement itself is being reconsidered, the Council of UC Faculty Associations joins the UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council in asking that you take whatever measures you can to ensure that any campus-level and BOARS deliberations around the UC A-G ethnic studies requirement include at least one ethnic studies specialist from at least half of each of our UC campuses. We ask this out of concern for ensuring that the process by which this important academic requirement is developed proceeds in an open and equitable manner.
We also call on you as chair of BOARS, to ensure that, in keeping with the terms of their appointment, the members of the A-G ethnic studies workgroup be allowed to help formulate any policy proposal on ethnic studies. It is troubling that they have repeatedly been blocked from participating in discussions they were charged with contributing to as content-area experts.
We ask that you support the integrity of ethnic studies as a field now over a half-century old by requiring coursework for incoming students that is consonant with that discipline as it is for all others.
Sincerely,
Constance Penley, CUCFA President and Professor of Film and Media Studies, UC Santa Barbara
On behalf of the Council of UC Faculty Associations
cc: BOARS Analyst Kenneth Freer
UC Systemwide Senate Chair Robert Horwitz
UC Provost Michael Brown
UC President Michael Drake
The UC Regents