Mark Stegeman was ousted from his position as president of the TUSD governing board Tuesday night, four days after he testified at an administrative hearing as an expert witness for the state that not only does he believe the ethnic studies classes violate parts of the anti-ethnic studies law, but that the Mexican American Studies classes display cult-like behaviors.
Governing board member Miguel Cuevas was named president after a 3-2 vote to oust Stegeman. Stegeman and Hicks voted no. After the vote, Hicks introduced a motion to replace the clerk of the board — Judy Burns — with Stegeman. The motion died. End of story.
It’s old news now, but in case you weren’t there, you can see how the vote took place in a video below made by Three Sonorans’ David Abie Morales.
Morales was also at the Democrats of Greater Tucson luncheon on Monday where Mexican American Studies director Sean Arce spoke on the beleaguered program. He was also asked to give his opinion on Stegeman’s accusations that the classes are cult-like. Video of Arce’s response is a must see:
This article appears in Aug 25-31, 2011.
Mr. Arce’s response is a “must see”, but not for the reason you think. He obviously has no idea who Eric Hoffer (not ‘Hopfler’ dude, sheesh) was, let alone the most remote familiarity with his ideas. He is simply repeating, almost verbatim, something Rodolfo Acuna wrote a few days earlier, in which ‘the father of Chicano studies’ dismissed the man who rose from extremely humble origins to become one of the most important American philosophers of the 20th century as a “right wing kook”. Mr. Arce then has the gall to talk about the need to be more “scholarly”!? Perhaps the most shameful part of this episode is that apparently no one at the event called him on it.