Defend Ethnic Studies at SFSU
Dear President Wong and Provost Rosser:
As members and allies of the Critical Filipina/x/o Studies Collective (CFSC), we stand in solidarity with the students, faculty, and community members who gathered on February 25, 2016 to protest the structural dismantling of the College of Ethnic Studies program at San Francisco State University.
CFSC is an activist-scholar group that seeks to organize educators and scholars to interrogate and challenge histories of Western imperialisms, ongoing neocolonial relations in the Philippines, and their relationship to past and present Filipina/x/o migrations through our research and teaching both within the university and beyond it. Aligned with our mission, we celebrate the mobilization of the committed activists and scholars who will continue to gather to “defend and deepen” Ethnic Studies as an important field of study to theorize the diverse experiences of immigrant and historically marginalized communities in the United States.
We cannot underscore the importance of Ethnic Studies as an academic discipline. Knowledge that foregrounds the lives and experiences of people of color in this country and the mobilization of diverse ways of knowing toward the realization of a society grounded in justice, equity, and human freedom must be defended and deepened. Ethnic Studies provides a space, both intellectually and physically, for students to understand that the history of this country is intertwined with the settler colonization and occupation of Native American lands, the enslavement of Africans and their generations after, and the labor of Latino and Asian migrant men and women. Ethnic Studies also offers students an opportunity to connect such histories to the issues they face today in racialized labor markets, politically diverse publics and an increasingly multicultural and global society.
As faculty and graduate students around the nation, we are in solidarity with the demands articulated by your committed student population to resolve the current crisis and advance Ethnic Studies at SFSU. We look forward to hearing from you by April 15, 2016 regarding the state of the historic and esteemed College of Ethnic Studies.We cannot underscore the importance of Ethnic Studies as an academic discipline. Knowledge that foregrounds the lives and experiences of people of color in this country and the mobilization of diverse ways of knowing toward the realization of a society grounded in justice, equity, and human freedom must be defended and deepened. Ethnic Studies provides a space, both intellectually and physically, for students to understand that the history of this country is intertwined with the settler colonization and occupation of Native American lands, the enslavement of Africans and their generations after, and the labor of Latino and Asian migrant men and women. Ethnic Studies also offers students an opportunity to connect such histories to the issues they face today in racialized labor markets, politically diverse publics and an increasingly multicultural and global society. As faculty and graduate students around the nation, we are in solidarity with the demands articulated by your committed student population to resolve the current crisis and advance Ethnic Studies at SFSU. We look forward to hearing from you by April 15, 2016 regarding the state of the historic and esteemed College of Ethnic Studies.