UC ethnic studies educators, concerned about censorship of Palestine in curricula, say the failed proposal faced a “procedurally irregular” journey
By KHADEEJAH KHAN — campus@theaggie.org
Students and University of California ethnic studies faculty have been advocating for an ethnic studies admissions requirement since 2020. A proposal that was initially intended to take one year took five — and advocates have linked this delay to the UC’s alleged efforts to censor conversations surrounding Palestine in the state’s K-12 curriculum.
The proposed Area A-G/H Ethnic Studies would have required high school students to take a non-additive, one-semester ethnic studies course for admission into one of the UC’s nine undergraduate campuses. It was rejected by a vote of the UC Academic Senate late last month.
Ethnic studies emerged out of students protesting United States imperialism in the Vietnam War as they demanded education that critically analyzed systems of imperialism, capitalism and settler colonialism.
“Ethnic studies — it’s about reality,” UC Davis Cultural Studies doctoral candidate Beshara Kehdi said. “It’s about history. It’s about why our communities are here and why they are the way that they are. We can’t explain those things without referring to the violent displacements resulting from racism, capitalism and ongoing imperial wars.”
Timeline of Area A-G/H Ethnic Studies proposal
Initially, the Area A-G/H Ethnic Studies proposal was unanimously approved by the UC Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS) in November 2020. A 20-person Ethnic Studies Faculty Workgroup was then appointed to develop new ethnic studies course guidelines to recommend to BOARS.
In November 2021, BOARS approved the recommended course criteria by a vote of 10-1, with one abstention, which would send the proposal to the Academic Council for consideration. The Academic Council sent the proposal for systemwide review, and by March 2022, the proposal was sent back to BOARS with feedback from each campus.
At this time in the process, Li Cai, a UC Los Angeles professor serving on BOARS, broke Academic Senate policy by leaking internal emails, according to a 2022 article from the Daily Bruin. Cai sent communications on Area A-G/H Ethnic Studies to opponents of the proposal, including Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, a former UC Santa Cruz faculty member and co-founder of the AMCHA Initiative, a non-profit organization committed to combating antisemitism in higher education.
The AMCHA Initiative previously released a letter in 2022 alleging that the proposal would “unleash hatred and bigotry, especially antisemitism.” However, in a 2014 letter, Jewish studies professors across the UC system described AMCHA’s definition of antisemitism as too broad. In their letter, they also critique AMCHA’s methods of monitoring, documenting, boycotting and doxxing of professors and students who are pro-Palestine and anti-Zionist in a way that can “deaden the kind of spirited academic exchange that is the lifeblood of the university.”
A press release issued by the UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council in 2022 rejects claims of antisemitism and questions the influence of “racist external pressures that inform [UC’s] deliberation around its proposed A-G ethnic studies requirement.”
“We also understand that the UC caved to spurious charges, in some cases advanced by people and organizations with a known history of racism, that our proposed criteria are ‘anti-Semitic’ and disparaging to Jewish Americans,” the press release reads. “This is a LIE. Nowhere in our course criteria do we mention Israel, Jewish people, or Judaism, much less any specific religion.”
In June 2023, BOARS approved the revised A-G ethnic studies course criteria by a vote of 9-2 with one abstention. While the vote was solely focused on the content of the criteria, members of BOARS shared concerns regarding implementation and access, according to meeting minutes.
BOARS was to vote on the proposal again in November 2023, but for the first time, the committee voted against sending the criteria to the Academic Council, despite it having previously been voted on and sent to the body.
Members of the UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council had previously described this voting process as “procedurally irregular,” noting that the first time BOARS voted in opposition to the proposal was following the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks, despite having received strong support in past votes.
“We have to raise the concerns in terms of why this requirement has been handled and subjected to this systemwide review in a completely different way than other requirements,” Natalia Deeb-Sossa, a UC Davis professor of Chicano and Chicana Studies, said.
Former UC Academic Senate Chair James Steintrager said the Area A-G/H Ethnic Studies proposal was concerning to the Regents due to its association with an October 2023 letter written by the Ethnic Studies Faculty Council, according to meeting minutes.
In the letter, members of the council rejected UC administrative communications that they allege “misrepresent the unfolding genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and thereby contribute to the racist and dehumanizing erasure of Palestinian daily reality.” The Ethnic Studies Faculty Council also called on the Regents to “uplift the Palestinian freedom struggle, and to stand against Israel’s war crimes against the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people.”
“I will do everything in my power to never let that happen,” UC Regent Jay Sures said in an open letter, calling the faculty council’s letter “appalling and repugnant.”
During that same period of time, Abigail Thompson, a UC Davis professor of mathematics and member of the UC Academic Senate, wrote a letter to the editor of The Davis Enterprise on campus protests by Students for Justice in Palestine titled, “Recognize True Evil.”
Thompson did not respond to requests for comment.
Dylan Rodríguez, a UC Riverside professor and member of the UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council, has been a strong advocate for Arab American and Palestinian curricula in ethnic studies. He considers the opposition he has faced for his advocacy “well beyond censorship,” describing emailed threats of violence and death he had received.
“Anti-Palestinian racism has actually defined the terrain of the struggle [of advocating for Area A-G/H Ethnic Studies],” Rodríguez said.
Despite BOARS voting against the proposal in November 2023, the Academic Council sent the proposal for systemwide review in January 2024 as a response to the previously approved request to consider the proposal. In a December meeting that year, the Assembly of the Academic Senate voted to postpone the vote on the proposal to April 2025.
Current status of the A-G/H Ethnic Studies proposal
On April 23, the assembly rejected sending the ethnic studies proposal to UC Regents and President Michael V. Drake by a vote of 29-12, with 12 abstentions.
For that meeting, the UC Students Association filed a petition to indicate student support for the proposal. Christine Hong, a UC Santa Cruz professor of critical race and ethnic studies, believes that the assembly’s vote is not only a rejection of the proposal but a show of its failure to serve student needs.
“We should be humbled before the fact that students have brought this forward and told us what they need,” Hong said. “We should be humbled before the fact that this is the sole field that has consistently been initiated by students — students who are oftentimes the most vulnerable within the institutional settings in which they’re fighting for ethnic studies.”
As ethnic studies advocates like Kehdi look toward the future of their discipline, the inclusion and expansion of Arab American and Palestinian studies remains essential in their advocacy.
“Whenever we see racial progress as in the expansion of Palestine and Arab American studies like in California, we see racist progress and Zionist pressures to eliminate them and turn the clocks back,” Kehdi said. “Genocide is the consequence of racism, and Israel’s U.S.-backed genocide in Palestine continues. There is no going back.”
Despite the outcome of the vote, the fight for ethnic studies continues — a characteristic that ethnic studies scholars believe define the movement.
“Ethnic studies is a grassroots struggle,” Sean Malloy, a UC Merced professor of critical race and ethnic studies, said. “We can win and lose individual battles, but the strength of this movement is in the community and student centered struggle — something they can never take away from us.”
This article is the second part of a continuing series on ethnic studies requirements for UC admission. Read the first part online.
Written by: Khadeejah Khan — campus@theaggie.org
