For thirty years, University students have petitioned successive Wesleyan administrations for an Ethnic Studies department. UC Berkeley professor Ron Takaki’s Wednesday multiculturalism in the U.S. highlighted what many students already know: Ethnic Studies deserves a place in this University.
Walk down to Main Street and look at the restaurants on it. In this small Connecticut town, Tibetan, Italian, Vietnamese, Mexican, Thai, and Chinese people all intermingle. And Middletown is a mere reflection of the United States. In 50 years, no one racial group will be the majority in this country. For Wesleyan to lack an Ethnic Studies department is to ignore a fundamental fact about the world we, as US citizens, will enter upon graduation. This country is multiethnic, multiracial, and multicultural, and any good college should expect its students to learn the theory behind and history of such a society.
An Ethnic Studies department would provide students the knowledge and understanding crucial in such a world. It would study how different races have interacted in the US in the same historical period; it would give voice to the people whose stories the dominant historical narrative does not tell; it would acknowledge the pivotal role that racial relations have played in US history; it would study art, sexuality, literature, theory, history. Currently, various departments address these issues—namely History, African American Studies, and American Studies—but they do so from one perspective only. Ethnic Studies would bring together and enhance these disciplines, offering not only cohesion but also wider range of viewpoints.
The common decision of many University students to double major indicates that a desire for academic breadth. They want to study more than one subject, and they want to study them from more than angle. Ethnic Studies would offer students the chance to choose just one major and get the scope they want.
Other universities throughout the US, such as Berkeley, Yale, and Columbia boast cutting-edge Ethnic Studies departments. For Wesleyan, an institution that bills itself as Diversity University and prides itself on being progressive, such a field of study is requisite.
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