UC Berkeley’s ethnic studies graduate program, the oldest program of its kind in the nation, has turned 40.
And earlier this month, about 40 people — including many current and former ethnic studies students at UC Berkeley — convened in the student union to reflect on the past, present and future of the field at a time when the Trump administration has labeled programs like ethnic studies that emphasize diversity as “illegal and immoral discrimination” and sought to cut funding for schools teaching “woke” ideology.
Cal’s ethnic studies program was founded in 1984 as the result of decades of student activism advocating for more courses dedicated to studying comparative race and ethnicity and for the campus to hire more minority faculty and staff.
That activist campaign, known as the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF), started at San Francisco State and UC Berkeley in the late 1960s and was led by a coalition of minority student groups wishing to see their lived experiences with oppression centered in academia. Since its inception, more than 170 students have graduated from the interdisciplinary Ph.D. program, according to a recent Cal press release