Barnard Hosts Discussion on Race and Ethnicity

Barnard students and administrators gathered Thursday evening to address the discussion of race and ethnicity in the classroom one day after student government representatives issued a statement calling for a diversification of the college’s general education requirements.

During the informal chat in Barnard Hall, students expressed their desire for a broader ethnic and racial studies program across the board, citing as problems the limited number of ethnic studies courses offered and the lack of an ethnic studies major.

Barnard College President Judith Shapiro, Associate Provost Flora Davidson, Dean of Studies Karen Blank, Dean Vivian Taylor, Dean Lisa Hollibaugh, and Barnard political science professor and hunger striker Dennis Dalton participated in the roundtable discussion, which was sponsored by the McIntosh Activities Council.

While Davidson said that the administration was discussing the possibility of adapting Columbia’s ethnic studies program for Barnard, she stood by the opportunities offered by its “Cultures in Comparison” general education requirement and Barnard’s overall course selection.

“We feel very strongly that, without a label of ethnic studies, that we have opportunities for our students, and have had them for a long time, to study what we think ethnic studies is about at Columbia,” Davidson said. “We do them [ethnic studies courses] through other interdisciplinary programs. They’re just not called ‘ethnic studies.’”

In its statement, the SGA called for an ethnic studies major and an inclusion of discussions of ethnicity and race into Barnard’s Nine Ways of Knowing curriculum, as well as the appointment of a provost for diversity. The Committee on Instruction is currently evaluating the college’s instructional requirements.

“The Core is something that’s older than old. It has its own office. It’s something that seems impenetrable at this point, but the Nine Ways of Knowing are constantly changing,” said SGA Academic Affairs Representative and founder of African diaspora journal The Proxy Keondra Prier, BC ’08. “It’s something that can change and I believe will change.”

Many attendees came out in support of the hunger strikers, with Prier chalking up the involvement of Barnard students’ to an activist spirit. “Barnard students have always been incredibly involved with activist movements,” Prier said. “There is a push for institutional change, there’s a push to change the way we look at academics, and the way that it’s taught in the classroom, and I think that’s why there are Barnard women protesting, because they strongly feel that there is a need for academic change.”

“I feel that it [diversity] is often here, we just don’t recognize it, and that it can be made better,” Dalton said. “We have the flexibility here, the cooperation on the part of the administration to do it. I’m not at all pessimistic about it.”

But some students expressed frustration at lack of communication between the COI and the greater student body, saying it left them shut out of the curriculum evaluation process. Some said that they had not even heard of the COI until recently.

“Students feel that since the COI is not advertised as much, that they think that things are not happening, but I can tell you that they are,” said event moderator and COI member Maisha Rashid, BC ’10,. “I wanted the students to be aware that the COI and the administrators at Barnard are much more willing to talk about what their concerns might be.”

While Davidson reaffirmed the administration’s commitment to academic integrity, she emphasized the long process in making structural changes.

“The change in academia happens much more slowly than any student wants to hear,” Davidson said.

Alix Pianin can be reached at news@columbiaspectator.com.