UC faculty delay proposal for ethnic studies requirement for incoming students

UC is still discussing how racist classes can be in order for students to enroll.

“The ethnic studies requirement will impact close to 200,000 California students applying to the UC and California State University systems annually by adding an area “H” to the long-standing A-G requirements that detail the various subjects students must complete during high school.

Uncertainty over how Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California Legislature will allocate additional funding for hundreds of school districts next year drove the choice to push the vote, said Steven Cheung, a professor at UC San Francisco and chair of the UC’s Academic Senate. In particular, funding for ethnic studies course development could affect a high school’s ability to meet the requirement, he added.

“We heard from virtually all hands that were raised, and as you can well imagine, the opinions ranging from one polarity to the other,” Cheung said. “But I would say that the concern about funding of the program really became a pivotal point of the debate.”

Ethnic studies in California government schools are openly racist, teach hate of white people, Asians and Jews.  You would think the California Democrat Party was taken over by the KKK.  But remember, the Democrats defended slavery, created Jim Crow laws and President Wilson segregated the military.  They are just living up to their legacy.

UC faculty delay proposal for ethnic studies requirement for incoming students

Royce Hall is pictured. UC faculty decided to delay until April the furthering of a proposal for an ethnic studies requirement for first-year admits to its colleges, including UCLA. (Daily Bruin file photo)

By Shaanth Kodialam, Daily Bruin,  12/26/24    https://dailybruin.com/2024/12/26/uc-faculty-delays-proposal-for-ethnic-studies-requirement-for-incoming-students

UC faculty have delayed sending the UC President and Board of Regents a first-year ethnic studies admissions proposal until they get more clarity from the state legislature’s upcoming budget.

Dozens of UC faculty members make up the UC Academic Senate Assembly, which on Dec. 12 pushed a critical vote back to April to have more time to decide whether to forward the measure to outgoing UC President Michael Drake and UC Provost Katherine Newman. That would be the last stop before the UC Regents and a final public vote, marking the furthest the measure has gone in two years.

The ethnic studies requirement will impact close to 200,000 California students applying to the UC and California State University systems annually by adding an area “H” to the long-standing A-G requirements that detail the various subjects students must complete during high school.

Uncertainty over how Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California Legislature will allocate additional funding for hundreds of school districts next year drove the choice to push the vote, said Steven Cheung, a professor at UC San Francisco and chair of the UC’s Academic Senate. In particular, funding for ethnic studies course development could affect a high school’s ability to meet the requirement, he added.

“We heard from virtually all hands that were raised, and as you can well imagine, the opinions ranging from one polarity to the other,” Cheung said. “But I would say that the concern about funding of the program really became a pivotal point of the debate.”

Concerns about how the ethnic studies course criteria should discuss political activism and address the Israel-Palestine conflict have long divided faculty, who shelved the proposal in a committee two years ago. It was revived after a series of technicalities and procedural moves, according to a Senate analysis of the requirement conducted earlier this year, but faculty critics remain concerned that the proposal could amplify a broader national backlash to discussing race in the classroom.

The vote to delay a decision was met with quick celebration by a national anti-diversity, equity and inclusion group that called the proposal an “unfunded mandate” and has been leading the public opposition to the requirement.

“We’re really happy with the result because it ensures that students for now will not be compelled to fulfill a requirement that could undermine the academic neutrality of their education,” said Leigh Ann O’Neill, Director of Legal Advocacy at the Foundation against Intolerance and Racism, in a newsletter post Dec. 18. “However, the work does not end here.”

A spokesperson for Newsom declined to comment on the record about what will be in his proposed January budget and said all of its items would remain confidential until official publication.

In 2021, he signed California’s first-in-the-nation ethnic studies high school graduation requirement into law, which requires that schools offer a semesterlong course by the 2025-2026 school year and implement the requirement by the 2029-2030 term. Aimed at complementing the state’s high school requirement, the UC’s proposal would kick in after the 2029-2030 school term, with a semesterlong course that can also fulfill another admissions category such as History or English.

But there are growing questions among UC faculty over whether the state’s current allocation of $50 million to school districts for ethnic studies course development is sufficient. Recent and previous estimates from lawmakers and state analysts indicate that the state may have to allocate more funding in the next few months, or the high school graduation requirement may not go into effect.

The Legislature and UC have previously faced questions about education funding while tensions brew over the Israel-Hamas war. In July, state lawmakers threatened to withhold $25 million in UC funding if UC leaders did not clarify protest and expression policies following the violence at spring pro-Palestine encampments at campuses like UCLA.

Cheung said he believes Newsom will make good on his support of ethnic studies development throughout the state.

“I’m sure his staff recognizes that one of the budgetary items under consideration would be the support of ethnic studies development in the high schools,” Cheung said. “Whenever you develop something new, you got to get the materials. There’s a lot of time involved.”

The new course criteria falls short of naming specific ethnic groups, Israel or Palestine, but it calls for courses to “teach local and global struggles against racism, imperialism, and state violence.” Another suggestion for a section on critical analysis says students can “contextualize ethnic studies within racial capitalism as a global system historically linked to transatlantic chattel slavery and the emergence of European and Euro-American colonialism.”

Moritz Meyer-Ter-Vehn, a professor of economics at UCLA and voting member of the Assembly, said he reached out to his fellow faculty in the department, many of whom told him they took issue with the proposal because they felt the requirement’s language was politically charged. For example, he said he feels the term racial capitalism carries an ideological bent and is not well-known in the field of economics.

The proposal’s authors have defended their use of the term and course criteria language. UC Santa Cruz critical race and ethnic studies and literature professor Christine Hong and UC Riverside teaching professor Wallace Cleaves wrote that racial capitalism is “a concept theorized especially powerfully in Black studies scholarship,” in a 2023 analysis explaining their proposal.

[Related: UCLA community discusses revised AP African American Studies course curriculum]

Cheung said there is a segment of faculty who feel uncomfortable with the fact that the curriculum has not fully addressed questions of bias, including antisemitism or Islamophobia. But faculty have undergone a thorough process to write the requirements and worked hard to address those concerns, he added.

The admissions committee that created the proposal in 2020, the Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools, voted 6-5 against endorsing it in November 2023.

Explaining that decision in a January 2024 letter, Barbara Knowlton, then-chair of the board and a UCLA professor of psychology, wrote that it was uncertain if future state funding would be available for ethnic studies in high schools aside from previous 2021 funding. She also had concerns about working with the authors behind the proposal, according to emails obtained through the California Public Records Act.

In one June 2022 exchange to top Senate faculty, Knowlton, then-vice chair, said she questioned whether two ethnic studies faculty members would be effective negotiation partners, accusing them of promoting misinformation and encouraging harassment. She alleged that one author, an ethnic studies scholar, made a “bizarre” claim that someone on the admissions committee “was surreptitiously working in league with a Jewish organization.”

In an emailed statement, she said the exchange in question had no impact on the board’s decision in 2023, which was fueled by implementation concerns for low-resourced schools. Knowlton stood by her allegations, naming the organization at the center of the claim against the scholar.

The group she named was among opponents who received the UC board’s internal discussions over the requirement that The Bruin reported in October 2022. The professor who distributed that information represented UCLA on the board, and he agreed to step out of further deliberations over the issue, said a spokesperson for the UCLA Academic Senate.

The ethnic studies professors behind the requirement would go on to add religion alongside gender, sexuality and class as other forms of identity that courses may focus on, according to the course criteria, an appeal to concerns about a lack of representation of Jewish and Muslim groups.

Cheung said he would not have brought the proposal up at the Assembly if the UC’s experts did not feel concerns surrounding inclusivity were adequately addressed. He added that he believes the UC’s criteria is more inclusive and accessible than the state model’s curriculum, which went through a similarly controversial revision process.

“Sometimes, the academics use terminology that is inaccessible to the public or create confusion because of very specific uses of words that mean something to them but different for the general public. Sometimes, all of us struggle with that,” Cheung said. “The question at the heart of the matter is for those folks who want to examine the criteria: Would they be persuaded?”

If the measure is approved by faculty, Drake would then have to present the requirement to the UC Provost and then the Regents, who would have the final vote on approving the proposal, Cheung said. Ethnic studies faculty and individual Regents have previously clashed over rhetoric surrounding the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

The CSU is also currently discussing the measure in its own Senate committees, but its representatives have reportedly expressed support for the measure in meetings with UC leadership, according to Senate meeting minutes.