SPEaK’s Conference Draws 150 to Lerner

It was the same chant that shook Columbia University six years ago when students went on hunger strikes to demand ethnic studies programs: "Ethnic Studies Now!"

But this time the chanting came from Lerner Hall's Jed Satow room, at the kickoff of the aptly named Ethnic Studies Now conference. The conference, held last weekend on the fifth floor of Lerner, drew 150 attendees from colleges and universities across the Northeast, as well as participants from universities in California and Texas.

Ethnic Studies Now was organized by Columbia's Students Promoting Empowerment and Knowledge and cosponsored by the Center for Study of Race and Ethnicity, the Asian American Alliance, and the United Students of Color Council. The conference included a variety of activities, from workshops mediated mostly by students to an ongoing art project in the Satow Room and an open mic night.

Workshops covered topics directly related to ethnic studies, such as utilizing independent media and the relationship between ethnic studies and gender studies, and more general topics, such as recruitment and retention of minority students and faculty.

The attendees' conceptions of ethnic studies were nearly as varied as the workshops they attended.

"It's going to take a lot of effort and a lot of time to get ethnic studies where it needs to be. We're still trying to figure out exactly how we want to see ethnic studies," SPEaK core member Maryani Rasidjan, CC '04, said.

SPEaK core member Hallie Montoya Tansey, CC '02, defined ethnic studies as "a critical lens through which to look at social formations such as race, gender, sexuality, class, and nation and seek an education that is reflective of and relevant to all people." Its manifestations on this campus are African-American, Latino, and Asian-American studies, but not, as of yet, Native-American studies, Tansey said.

Tansey described ethnic studies as a means to an end that possesses "the ability to make powerful social change."

Rasidjan saw ethnic studies as "a movement of the people ... It's not just us students learning a certain thing and moving on to the work force, it's about really having the community in it with you and finding out what they need as you're learning."

Conference attendees came from a broad variety of institutions, including schools with a long tradition of ethnic studies activism and others with more nascent movements. Despite these differences, organizers agreed that all were passionate about ethnic studies.

"I'm a white person who goes to a school full of white people who all espouse to embrace diversity mostly because they've never had to deal with it," Rebecca Heller, Dartmouth '05, said. "We don't have to love each other, but we have to understand each other, and we won't be able to do that unless we know where each other comes from."

Cherie Wilson, University of Pennsylvania '05, lamented what she perceived as a universal lack of support for minority students at all schools. "I'm really surprised at how bad it is," she said.

SPEaK members and conference participants alike agreed that networking was one of the most vital parts of the conference.

Elizabeth Todd, University of Pennsylvania '04, said she hoped dialogue with other activists about their experiences would give her "building tools to take back to our own campus."

"I think it's very important for students from different schools to network about ethnic studies. The different administrations of the schools really look to each other to see which way the wind is blowing," Tansey said.

In addition, Rasidjan said the community that the conference provided could be an inspiration for activists, who can be prone to feeling alone in their ambitions.

"You get really motivated, and you go out and organize. In that moment of energy, you kind of need a place to come back and regroup and have a base where everyone is in the same mindset," Rasidjan said.

For some of the speakers at Friday's kickoff panel on the relationship between communities of color and academia, this weekend was the first time they had been invited to return to Columbia.

"You are the only ones to invite me back," said keynote speaker Jane Bai, executive director of the Committee against Anti-Asian Violence, who began the "Ethnic Studies Now" chant.

As a Ph.D candidate at Columbia, Bai was one of the "ethnic studies six" who led an occupation of Hamilton Hall in spring of 1996 and a subsequent takeover of Low Library a few months later. It was during this spring that four students began a two-week hunger strike culminating in negotiations that called for the formation of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race.

"At that time we shook the wrought iron gates of the ivory tower, and that time has come again," Bai said, calling ethnic studies in the 21st century a "critical site of struggle."