I came across a strange story in the latest SF Weekly:

The story of San Francisco State’s College of Ethnic Studies, the first and still the only program of its kind, is a sort of shadow history of America’s latter half-century. In it you’ll find all the familiar blips of the past 40 years. There is student radicalism and campus rebellion; there is hopped-up idealism, followed closely by compromise and a struggle against an encroaching obsolescence.

The article covers so much, I don’t even know where to begin. I’ll just quote random paragraphs:

“As a gay man, in the Castro in San Francisco, and camp such as it is, we refer to ourselves in very gendered terms,” says Tomás Almaguer, who spent 4 1/2 years as dean before resigning this past fall amid accusations that he created a hostile work environment within the college. “You might notice that my e-mail address is ‘tomasa’ — it’s a play. Have I ever referred to myself and my friends as bitches? All the time! I’ve been referred to as Queen Bitch of the Universe! Megabitch! That’s one of my identities.”

I guess this is one of the reasons why Ethnic Studies isn’t taken seriously. There are countless others.

Almaguer says his plan for the college was “bold and provocative and very hard-hitting,” with a management style to match — a “shock-and-awe approach,” he says. He pushed for mixed-race studies, as well as a larger gay, lesbian, and transgender presence in the curriculum; he staffed the graduate ethnic-studies program with full-time faculty; he says he “resurrected” American Indian studies, which “had imploded”; and he reallocated money for recruitment and retention of minority students, infuriating Asian American studies but delighting Raza studies.

So many “studies,” so little time.

Eventually, though, any review of the College of Ethnic Studies will have to confront the uncomfortable possibility of the program’s obsolescence. Berkeley has done it. In 1998, Ling-chi Wang, then the chair of the ethnic studies department and one of its founders, suggested merging ethnic studies with American studies. The proposal was deemed heresy, and it ultimately stalled, but Wang’s argument was and remains convincing. As one Cal professor told the online magazine Salon: “What would it say about the role of ethnic minorities in America to continue to insist that ethnic studies be separate from American studies? The symbolism is very disturbing.”

If something’s obsolete, I say get rid of it.

I still don’t know what this story was all about. But it’s safe to say that my opinion of this “major” remains the same.