Report Calls Ethnic Studies Inadequate

A new student report calls ethnic studies at Columbia "immensely under-funded and under-supported" by the University and recommends departmental status for current centers, institutes, and programs by 2010.

The recommendations, released yesterday, were put forth by 15 members of a student-initiated independent study course in the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race. The authors said that the study was intended to inform faculty, administrators, and students of the importance of ethnic studies as a discipline, and the imperative of creating an ethnic studies department at Columbia.

"A big part of the reason for writing the report is to present the academic justification for why ethnic studies is important for Columbia specifically, and how it furthers ... the purported mission of the college and the Core Curriculum," Solomon Chao, CC '07 and a member of the class, the Asian American Alliance, and Students Promoting Empowerment and Knowledge.

Columbia students have been fighting for a stronger ethnic studies curriculum for almost 40 years. In 1996, a group of undergraduates went on a two-week hunger strike and took over Hamilton Hall, demanding the creation of an ethnic studies department. The University responded by creating CSER, which has one tenured professor-the director, Claudio Lomnitz-and does not possess autonomous hiring power. Since the center's creation, ethnic studies students have continued to push for the expansion of the discipline at Columbia through various forms of protest and activism.

The report outlines the current state of ethnic studies at Columbia, comparing it to ethnic studies at peer institutions such as Harvard, Princeton, and Dartmouth, where some programs have autonomous hiring power, faculty endowment, and several times as many course offerings as Columbia. CSER currently offers four ethnic studies courses, one of which is an independent study. Two ethnic studies courses were not offered this semester due to lack of funding, including Introduction to Comparative Ethnic Studies-a requirement for the major.

"I think that one function of the report is that it presents the administration with ... a clear demonstration that there really isn't a question about whether or not more needs to be done to support ethnic studies," said Jennifer Oki, CC '07, a member of the class, and executive co-chair of the United Students of Color Council.

Students said that writing a comprehensive report was important to ensure that the work they did during their time at Columbia would not be forgotten.

"In terms of institutional memory, the report is also a way of keeping this information alive after we're gone," Oki added.

Students said they had been confronting opposition to the creation of an ethnic studies department since they began fighting for the expansion of the discipline.

"I also think that ... a department of ethnic studies or robust ethnic studies programs are threatening to some political and intellectual agendas because it challenges a lot of dominant paradigms about race and class," Christien Tompkins, CC '08, a member of the class, and political co-chair for USCC, said. "In a certain sense it's very disruptive, which a lot of folks may not be ready for."

A section of the report written by students who attend Barnard-which provides no ethnic studies offerings-said, "The majority of current Barnard students are not prepared to theorize issues of race and ethnicity when these issues are only marginally addressed in scattered courses."

In additional to the creation of an ethnic studies department, the report also recommends autonomous hiring power for all programs, an immediate "cluster hire" of at least three ethnic studies professors, and increased course offerings in Native American studies.

Lomnitz declined to comment on the report.

Tompkins said that the absence of a strong ethnic studies program at Columbia fundamentally limits what the University has to offer all students, and not just those majoring within the center.

"If I don't want to think about race and racism, I just want to learn about great works of Western world and go into finance ... this is a great place," Tompkins said. "But if I'm concerned with race and racism and poverty ... if I want spend my life working in my community, this is not a University that supports all of that."