Analyzing the Strikes at San Francisco State College and Berkeley to Understand Today’s Debates Over Ethnic Studies

• In Event: Differences, Debates, and Dilemmas in Higher Education

Abstract

Hostile treatment toward ethnic and racial minority groups has recently increased, leading to a demand for more ethnic studies programs to be offered. However, there is considerable resistance to the idea of implementing these programs. To understand the origins of this resistance, this paper explores how U.S. ethnic studies programs started. Although these programs were implemented after student strikes that resulted in violence, ethnic studies programs do not contribute to the divisiveness their critics say they do. Although researchers have documented what occurred during the ethnic studies strikes of the 1960s, few, if any, have done so exclusively to understand the resistance towards ethnic studies programs that exists today. This paper was written to fill this gap in the literature.

Author

• Hani Morgan, University of Southern Mississippi