In the nature of journalism collaboration, here is the story done by Roque Planas, a young reporter from Fox News Latino who was just in Tucson to cover this event.
Why, you may wonder, would I post something from a News Corps. outlet on the Weekly? Well, TW’s Mari Herreras was among Roque’s main resources for backgrounding the his coming series. Contributor Julian Ybarra also spent nearly three days working with Planas as the camera guy.
Read on…
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Arizona Official Considers Targeting Mexican American Studies in University
By Roque Planas, Fox News Latino
An Arizona official who led the effort to suspend Mexican American studies from Tucson public schools is considering taking his fight to the state university system.
Arizona’s superintendent of schools, John Huppenthal, says Tucson’s suspended Mexican American studies curricula teaches students to resent Anglos, and that the university program that educated the public school teachers is to blame.
“I think that’s where this toxic thing starts from, the universities,” Arizona Superintendent of Schools John Huppenthal said in an interview with Fox News Latino.
This article appears in Mar 22-28, 2012.
Back in the late 60s and early 70s students at my college and many others, along with scholars and administrators, began to clamor for programs in women’s studies, area studies, and of course, ethnic studies. At my school, given the community and student body, we established departments of Afro-American Studies (sounds retro now, since changed to Africana Studies, which is not quite the same thing as African-American), Judaic Studies, and Puerto Rican Studies. Most colleges of any size, and certainly public universities, have departments or programs like Mexican-American Studies (obviously there are more of the latter in the Southwest and West).
How they can target Mexican-American Studies without going after the University’s Judaic Studies, Africana Studies, Native American Studies, etc.? These programs and disciplines are well-established. Certainly Women’s Studies has been for decades, and Queer Studies, too.
Maybe they should just start a White Studies program, which probably would be a good idea, because there is serious scholarship in that field, too, though the usual term is Whiteness Studies. If you want to read an excellent scholarly book, there’s “The History of White People” by Nell Irvin Painter.
This is akin to those small towns where they tried to remove all public library books written by gay people (or mark them with a pink triangle or something).
As someone who’s worked in higher education as a professor and administrator since 1975, I know there are more important issues in public higher education that the legislators and state administration should be concentrating on. But that wouldn’t be as much fun for them, would it? After all, budgeting is so boring compared to bashing Mexican-Americans.