Moving Beyond Self-validation - Institutional and Pedagogical Strategies for Avoiding Cooptation

From the perspective of the pedagogical strategies of one Ethnic Studies PhD program, this paper explores the intellectual and political questions facing Ethnic Studies today. It calls for moving beyond the validation of differential experiences, which it argues, risks to become an apolitical exercise in mainstream multiculturalism. We focus on the relevance and limitations of an institutionalized ethnic studies in the 21st century given more timely demographic descriptors of the U.S., and a global economy and workforce. Based on our macro- and micro- multidimensional perspectives, research, and experience in public, private, nonprofit and university sectors for 40 years, we discuss three points: [1] the relevance and timeliness for a School of Ethnic Studies in 1968 in San Francisco; [2] successes and limitations of Ethnic Studies in the 20th Century; [3] how might Ethnic Studies adapt to a changing environment? http://www.sfsu.edu/~ethnicst/