BY HANK REICHMAN

A little more than a year ago the Chancellor of the California State University system (CSU) issued two executive orders governing general education and remediation.  The directives, prepared and released without appropriate faculty input, were immediately controversial.  In October 2017, the California Faculty Association (CFA), an AAUP-affiliate representing over 27,000 CSU faculty members, called for rescinding the order involving general education.  Soon after, the chairs of the campus academic senates released an open letter, which declared that “All curricular decisions affect students directly, and therefore all curricular decisions must, by nature, lie with the teaching faculty and students; General Education criteria are not exempted.”  In November 2017, the Academic Senate of the CSU (ASCSU) passed a resolution objecting “to the severely time-constrained and flawed shared governance process and consultation” followed by the administration and requesting that the administration put the orders “into abeyance and defer their implementation date” pending “data-driven and genuine consultation with faculty.” 

In February, the California Conference of the AAUP passed a resolution condemning the process that produced the orders and calling on Chancellor Timothy White to rescind the general education order (EO 1100 Revised).  Soon after, the national AAUP wrote Chancellor White urging him “to hold the executive orders in abeyance, as requested by ASCSU, and to allow the faculty to exercise primary responsibility in the curricular decisions implicated by the executive orders.”

With respect to EO 1100 (Revised), which mandated a maximum number of units of general education, the principal curricular impact of the decision was to threaten requirements adopted by several CSU campuses for general education courses on gender, race, and ethnicity.  One such campus is CSU, Northridge (CSUN), where the GE program has required that all students take at least two courses about gender, culture or languages of other peoples.  The campus gave students freedom to fulfill upper-division general education requirements with a broad range of courses; White’s order specified one course in science, one in the arts or humanities, and one in social sciences.

Shortly after the order’s release the department chairs and coordinators of Africana Studies, American Indian Studies, Asian American Studies, Central American Studies, Chicano/a Studies, and Gender and Women’s Studies issued a statement, which declared that the order “eviscerates CSUN’s unique and exemplary Section F ‘Comparative Cultural Studies/Gender,Race,Class, and Ethnicity Studies, and Foreign Languages,’ denying CSUN students an education based on cultural competency and respect for diversity.  It flagrantly undermines the autonomy of CSUN’s Faculty Governance and demonstrates disdain toward the democratic consultation processes, as well as contempt towards our Departments and Programs that are deeply affected by EO 1100.”

Although the order took effect systemwide this Fall, White granted Northridge a year’s extension.  This year, the San Fernando Valley campus of more than 38,000 students is offering about 135 courses in comparative cultural studies, which fulfill the GE requirement.  Subjects include Asian American immigration, African American personality development, American Indian philosophy, Armenian women, the Central American diaspora, modern Italian culture, European geography, Jewish history, Middle East civilization, queer health and disability studies.

On Thursday students and faculty protested the order, disrupting an outdoor welcome ceremony for new students at Oviatt Lawn outside the main library.  They interrupted speakers in academic regalia with chants against the rules, pumped their fists and waved signs that read “Keep Diversity in Our University” and “Defend Sacred Knowledge.”

Reporting on the demonstration, Los Angeles Times reporter Teresa Watanabe spoke with students who attested to the importance of the school’s cultural competence/diversity requirement:

Cal State Northridge senior Angelo Mutia is a straight man who admits he’s used a slur to describe gay men.  He’s joked about transgender people.  He’s dismissed as “ridiculous” any gender identities besides male and female.

His attitudes changed, he said, two years ago, when he took a class to fulfill a campus requirement for coursework in comparative cultural studies.

In his gender and women’s studies class, he learned about LGBTQ struggles, the spectrum of human sexuality and how insecurities about his own masculinity led him to denigrate others.

“I didn’t realize how homophobic I was, but this is what this campus loves to teach: how to interact in a diverse world,” Mutia said. . . .

Christian Valenzuela, a senior who emigrated from Mexico when he was 4, said he was raised with ignorance about Asian Americans.  But he learned in Chicano and Chicana studies courses that Filipinos and Mexican farmworkers struggled together and that Chinese laborers were attacked and eventually banned from entry into the United States in the late 19th century.

“I identify so much more now with Asian American communities because we’ve had the same struggles,” he said.

Karen Loong, a senior, said the courses changed her career ambitions.  Loong planned to become a lawyer until she took her first Asian American studies course.  She was stunned to learn about Vincent Chin, a Chinese immigrant who was beaten to death in Michigan in 1982 by two men who thought he was Japanese and blamed him for layoffs in the auto industry.  The attackers were convicted of manslaughter.

After taking the course, Loong switched her major from political science to Asian American studies.  She now wants to join a nonprofit to help victims of violence and promote civil rights.

A course on “Men, Masculinity and Patriarchy” made Brittney Harvey, a senior, more empathetic toward men.  After learning that close male friends in the 1800s used to hold hands and link arms, she said, she realized that society’s current norms of masculinity have deprived many men of the chance to express such intimacy.

“The course made me realize that everyone is a victim, even men,” she said.

Crystal Rose Waters, a third-year transfer student who watched the protest on Thursday, didn’t need to be convinced of the protesters’ arguments.

“There’s value in those courses, just to be a better human,” said the music therapy major of Slovakian, German, French, Irish and Scottish descent.  “Isn’t that the whole point of college — to learn to function in society surrounded by other cultures?”

It isn’t too late for the White administration to work with CSU faculty to address any legitimate concerns about general education and remediation.  In doing so, CSU administrators should acknowledge the immensely positive contribution of courses like those required at CSUN to any effective general education program.

CSUN students and faculty rally to support diversity courses.