The California State University system will soon require students to take an ethnic studies or social justice-related course before they graduate, a decision made by the board of trustees on June 22, against the backdrop of a national reckoning with racism.
The requirement will kick in starting in the 2023-24 academic year, a move university leaders couched as the first major change to the system’s general education requirements in four decades.
But ethnic studies scholars opposed the change. The problem: the requirement doesn’t actually require an ethnic studies class.
It’s like “cheese food” products, or spray cheese, said Dr. Kenneth P. Monteiro, chair of California State University’s Council of Ethnic Studies and former dean of the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University. “There’s no cheese in it, except the name,” or only a trace to keep the labeling.
Three-credit classes that cover social justice themes, like racial disparities in public health, or that focus on marginalized groups, like LGBTQ, Jewish or Muslim communities, would qualify for the requirement. And while Monteiro values those disciplines, and sees them as outgrowths of ethnic studies, he said 18 out of 23 California State campuses already have some kind of general diversity requirement. So, the new one feels like a “Trojan horse.”
This is “an old-school, omnibus diversity requirement such that any class that speaks about any kind of diversity … and has a justice tinge to it will go into those three credits,” he added. “San Francisco State has had such a requirement for 40 years. So, this would’ve been cutting edge in the 1980s.”
Dr. Timothy P. White, chancellor of the California State University system, described the new, system-wide mandatory course as a move that “lifts Ethnic Studies to a place of prominence in our curriculum, connects it with the voices and perspectives of other historically oppressed groups, and advances the field by applying the lens of social justice.”
