UCSD History of Student Activism Teach-In
Created by Bobby Edwards, UCSD History Department in January 2021
UCSD's History of Union Organizing
Created by Bobby Edwards, UCSD History Department in January 2021
“Diversity”: Student Demands and Institutional Co-Option by J. Hatrick-Watson
Readings (and notes) Used To Research For This Project
A Third University is Possible by K. Wayne Yang
- Shows the relationship between settler colonial state, imperial militarism, and education
- Focus on necropolitics
- The construction of the scyborg
Campus Based Community Centers: Havens, Harbors, and hope for Underrepresented and Marginalized Student Success by Edwina Welch
- Belonging as a research construct
- “A case study approach allows for a better understanding of the particulars involved in student interaction within the physical and affective space of each Center and how this interaction contributes to a sense of belonging.” (9)
- History of cultural centers as working to create a safe space
- “According to Senge, ―systemic structure is concerned with key interrelationships over time” (39)
- Photography: “In photo elicitation, participants were asked to create artifacts of their experiences within each research site and then reflect on image selection and image groupings.” (58)
- feelings of belonging have direct correlations with retention
- question: ask Edwina to explain the Community Center Navigational Model
- “the complexity of belonging” (153)
Feminist Community Organizing on a College Campus by Diane Martell and Nancy E. Avitabile
- “Organizers concentrate on the acquisition and redistribution of power” (394)
- “The group wins even if concrete goals are not attained because members gain skills, insight, and experience through the organizing process.” (395)
Handbook of Critical Race Theory in Education by Marvin Lynn and Adrienne D. Dixson
- Chapter 7. Origins of and Connections to Social Justice in Critical Race Theory in Education by Thandeka K. Chapman
- Queries the ways in which social justice frameworks have been used to both reproduce “norms of power and privilege” and dismantle them (102).
- Offers multiple definitions of inequality and social justice.
- Shows the ways in which scholars who work on CRT are invested in social justice, through doing difficult and unwanted labor (109)
- Queries the ways in which social justice frameworks have been used to both reproduce “norms of power and privilege” and dismantle them (102).
- Chapter 8. Doing Class in Critical Race Analysis in Education by Michael J. Dumas
- Looks at the occupy wall street movement as a white space, and shows how its focus on classism worked to erase racism
- Presents the arguments against CRT by Marxian scholars, and CRT scholars’ responses.
- “CRT scholars would contend that a Marxian approach is limited from the beginning in its theoretical denial of racism as a system of its own and not simply an ideological dimension of capitalist modes of production.” (119)
- “Legal scholar Elizabeth Iglesias (2000), most notably, proposes the concept of “racial spaces” to explain how neoliberal economies reimagines communities as “networks of markets” to be primed for the flow of capital.”, meaning neoliberal formations “ultimately contribute to patterns of development, marginalization, and exploitation aligned with the racial composition of different communities.” (123)
- “Racial spaces are visible artifacts of both racial segregation and the relations of investment, production and exchange that are reflected in the export of capital; monopolies of political and economic power; and the restricted circulation of goods, services and capital within racially subordinated communities.” Elizabeth Iglesias
- Looks at the occupy wall street movement as a white space, and shows how its focus on classism worked to erase racism
- Chapter 9. The Policy of Inequity: Using CRT to Unmask White Supremacy in Education Policy by David Gillborn
- Looks at HB2281 in Arizona which banned Ethnic Studies in High Schools, as an example of how “democratic” neoliberal policy is used to enforce White Supremacy.
- “The fears and interests of White people are placed at the forefront of the policy” (132)
- Critiques the homogenization of Whiteness and White people in educational policy
- Discusses the wearing of face veils by Muslim women in Europe. “The entire history of policy and debate on multiculturalism in England has been characterized by a central concern with the interests, feelings, and fears of White people, from the earliest decisions about the need to limit the number of “immigrant” students in any one school (for fear of upsetting White parents) to new requirements making English language competence mandatory for new citizens.” (133)
- Connection to racial pessimism - HB2281 as a response to the establishment of Raza Studies
- CRT understands policy as “a process that is shaped by the interests of the dominant White population” (134)
- Bell’s theory of Interest Convergence (134)
- Bell’s theory of Interest Convergence (134)
- Looks at HB2281 in Arizona which banned Ethnic Studies in High Schools, as an example of how “democratic” neoliberal policy is used to enforce White Supremacy.
- Chapter 11. Badges of Inferiority: The Racialization of Achievement in U.S. Education by Sonya Douglass Horsford and Tanetha J. Grosland
- The authors look at the construction of Black inferiority/White superiority within the educational system; they show that within the past few years this has been reconstituted through the “achievement gap”. They show that the construction of Black people as inferior to Whites has always existed within the U.S. as has been used (and continues to be used within systems of incarceration) to justify slavery within the U.S., and was continually constructed post-13th amendment via the Plessy v. Ferguson case which codified the practice of “separate but equal”, a case that continues to be used in attempted legal justifications of educational segregation. The term “achievement gap” first appeared in 1964, ten years after Brown v. Board, to describe the educational difference between Black and “other” students.
- The authors argue that to understand the construction of the achievement gap as an issue of class/race/gender/citizenship status, one must understand the history of the U.S., and its investment in White supremacy. They go on to address the ways in which while black segregated schools were able to serve as “safe houses” they have now been constructed via school closings, lost jobs, a disproportionate of desegregation on the black community, and the lack of investment and resources by the nation-state into schools educating majority Black students. They go on to look at some of the psychological effects on Black students via their construction as inferior within “colorblind”, decontextualized educational settings. They present a multi-step progress from racial literacy to racial reconciliation as a aid to changing the system.
- The authors look at the construction of Black inferiority/White superiority within the educational system; they show that within the past few years this has been reconstituted through the “achievement gap”. They show that the construction of Black people as inferior to Whites has always existed within the U.S. as has been used (and continues to be used within systems of incarceration) to justify slavery within the U.S., and was continually constructed post-13th amendment via the Plessy v. Ferguson case which codified the practice of “separate but equal”, a case that continues to be used in attempted legal justifications of educational segregation. The term “achievement gap” first appeared in 1964, ten years after Brown v. Board, to describe the educational difference between Black and “other” students.
Influences of Diverse University Contexts on Students’ Ethnic Identity and College Adjustment by Anna M. Ortiz and Silvia J. Santos
- Discusses the importance of ethnic studies/language classes and student orgs
Nine Themes in Campus Racial Climates and Implications for Institutional Transformation by Shaun R Harper and Sylvia Hurtado
- “Everything is so White. The concerts: White musicians. The activities: catered to White culture. The football games: a ton of drunk White folks. All the books we read in class: White authors and viewpoints. Students on my left, right, in front and in back of me in my classes: White, White, White, White. I feel like there is nothing for us here besides the [cultural] center, but yet [this university] claims to be so big on diversity. That is the biggest white lie I have ever heard.”
Re-examining Diversity Policy at University of California, San Diego: The Racial Politics of Asian Americans by Angela Wai-Yin Kong
- Combination of Asian/Americans being presented as both a “yellow peril” and a “model minority”
- La Jolla’s historical investment in White community and UCSD’s historical investment in standardized testing from inception. “UC San Diego’s public mission was to assist in the production of weaponry and technology needed to win the Cold War.” (6) - The Cold War was inherently orientalist.
- UCSD refuses to disaggregate statistics on Asian Americans
- Southeast Asian students have a very different college experience to East or South Asian
- Southeast Asian students have a very different college experience to East or South Asian
- Success is only understood “through standardized test scores, gradepoint averages, and college attainment” (18)
- “Access and retention studies discuss the need to increase the number of Black and Latino college students while ignoring Southeast Asian American students to increase the diversity make-up of a university, emphasizing the need for a supportive academic environment to increase retention.” (21)
- From the Asian American Student Association’s 1971 recruitment flyer. “You try to ignore these assaults and continue to accept white culture and to prove how white you really are.”
- Asian American students were not considered a minority at UCSD long before they made up the largest percentage of the student body (48)
- “The Bakke decision was an important marker that validated the importance of “diversity,” rather than racial justice, in institutions of higher education in the 1980s and 1990s” (56)
- Investment in California’s racial liberalism.
- “In the survey I conducted in June 2010, I asked Asian Americans on campus, “Does UC San Diego address concerns and issues relating to Asian American students?” results indicated that 94.6% said “No.”.” (92)
- The ways in which through research the university promotes white supremacy are important to understand
The Reorder of Things: The University and its Pedagogies of Minority Difference by Roderick A. Ferguson
- Letter from Adrian Piper to Diana Chapman Walsh, president of Wellesley College from 1993 to 2007 “Wellesley has used my public visibility to enhance its multicultured public image while in reality actively preventing me from doing the multicultural work it publicly claims to welcome.” (2)
- The structures of power that put Ethnic Studies/Women Studies etc. in place in the academy, did so, so as to enable their controlling of these departments and to prevent economic, epistemological, and political revolutions. (6) called “absorption” by Omi and Winant (27)
- “Adaptive hegemony” (6)
- Substitution of redistribution for representation.
- The introduction of non-dominant knowledge led to the reordering of the academy, so as to help “inform the archival agendas of state and capital” the academy was able to decide “how best to institute new peoples, new knowledges, and cultures and at the same time disciple and exclude those subjects according to a new order” (12)
- Neocolonialism - perpetuating colonialism while talking about freedom (21)
- Role of capitalism and globalization, arising alongside feminist/third world movements
- “The question of minority difference--how to understand it, how to negotiate it, how to promote it, and how to regulate it.” (28)