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About: Resolutions and Actions
Establishment of a Standing Committee on Ethnic Studies
March 2003
The National Council voted unanimously at its November 11, 2002 business meeting to establish a Standing Committee on Ethnic Studies.
The Council discussed how, living as we do in an era of heightened racialized and civic nationalism, we find ourselves in a particularly critical moment as the United States turns toward what we might call “imperialist nationalism.“ It agreed that now is time for the American Studies Association (and the academy more broadly) to reaffirm its commitment to and support of those who explore the theoretical and practical significance of race and ethnicity. This translates into a moment to create a standing Committee on Ethnic Studies instead of merely retiring the Task Force on Relations with Ethnic Studies Programs, Faculty, and Students.
The Committee on Ethnic Studies will facilitate and mediate ideas and issues between and among ASA standing committees. The fundamental project of the Committee on Ethnic Studies is to make evident that Ethnic Studies is American Studies and American Studies is Ethnic Studies. The two are interwoven at the same time that they often have discrete needs and concerns, scholarly and otherwise.
The charge of the new committee is as follows:
The association shall have as one of its standing committees the Committee on Ethnic Studies. The Committee on Ethnic Studies shall have as its function to keep the Council and the association’s membership informed of the current activities, interests, and professional concerns affecting Ethnic Studies programs, departments, and scholars; to act as a liaison among association standing committees; and to have responsibility for special tasks involving Ethnic Studies scholars and scholarship. The Committee on Ethnic Studies shall be composed of six members of the association named by the Executive Committee with the approval of the Council, following an open call to the membership for self-nominations and suggestions. Each of these six members shall serve three-year, non-renewable, staggered terms. The chair of the Committee on Ethnic Studies shall be named from the committee’s membership by the Executive Committee with the approval of the Council and shall serve a single term not to exceed three years.
Background
Over the last four years, the members of the Task Force on Ethnic Studies (or, the “Task Force”) have set up a structure to nominate Ethnic Studies scholars for American Studies committee assignments. This structure has a ripple effect over time advancing the ASA’s goal of increasing minority members’ involvement and, by extension, increasing the involvement of the Ethnic Studies departments and programs of various configurations they represent. That process, like many of its activities, will fall through the cracks if there is no entity to continue it.
The Task Force was able to organize three years of visibility and dialogue in its dedicated slot(s) in the conference program. Their sessions encouraged faculty, graduate students, and administrators of Ethnic Studies units to raise issues and vent frustrations relevant to the quality of life in those units and in their relationship to the association and American Studies scholarship more broadly. The Task Force also showcased successful Ethnic Studies programs and highlighted topics of particular relevance and urgency as in last year’s plenary session on the affirmative action crisis in higher education. There is no guarantee that these issues will continue to be addressed without an institutional presence in the ASA relating directly to Ethnic Studies.
The Task Force added authority and consistency to significant American Studies Association agenda issues. For example, the Task Force submitted annual statements supporting the ASA’s public proclamations in favor of affirmative action. The Task Force also applauded the ASA’s proactive policy of holding conferences in those states and cities that continue to support affirmative action policies. This internal support of ASA decision-making would not have been possible if the institutional presence of the Task Force were not in place. Underlining the significance of this presence is the fact that the Task Force was able to facilitate the establishment of the Lora Romero Prize by bringing the Minority Scholars and Women’s Committees into joint conversations at mid-year meetings. This prize represents real institutional change and serves to underscore the critical role of the Task Force and its ability to support and engage networks of Ethnic Studies scholars.
The record of the Task Force’s accomplishments to this point argued for its continued and permanent institutional status. Even if one only takes into consideration the ways in which the Task Force facilitated the Romero Prize’s conception and the Task Force’s coordinated nomination of Ethnic Studies scholars for officer positions within the ASA one sees the important role that a Committee on Ethnic Studies could play in the evolving institutional structure of the ASA.
As a standing committee these are the specific goals that would define the committee’s work:
A Committee on Ethnic Studies will continue to maintain and develop the Ethnic Studies Program Directory.
The Ethnic Studies Directory is a critical resource for scholars interested in the discipline. It provides a clearinghouse of information for program and department administrators as they seek to forge cross-institutional discussions and even affiliations. The Directory simplifies Ethnic Studies scholars’ individual need to know which institutions offer program or departmental support and who teaches at which academic units. Finally, the Directory is a useful database for current or potential graduate students as they develop their own professional networks.
A Committee on Ethnic Studies will be a liaison with the Minority Scholars Committee, the Women’s Committee, the Committee on American Studies, the International Committee, the Committee on Secondary Education, and the Students’ Committee.
The standing committee will continue to work with the Minority Scholars Committee and the Women’s Committee as the Task Force did in the creation of the Romero Prize. The distinction between the Task Force’s charge (and thus of the Committee on Ethnic Studies) and that of Minority Scholars Committee has never been challenged: the two committees are complimentary but separate in their engagement of issues that, on the one hand, affect individual scholars and, on the other, affect “collective” enterprises at the departmental, programmatic, and disciplinary levels.
As the body that is supporting Ethnic Studies scholarship within the ASA the Committee on Ethnic Studies can offer expertise in assisting the missions of other committees in redefining the notion of what constitutes “American Studies.“ The Committee on Ethnic Studies can also facilitate interactions between different standing committees when the issues pertaining to Ethnic Studies scholars and scholarship cross “jurisdictional lines” within the ASA committee structure.
A standing Committee on Ethnic Studies can act in liaison with other committees to identify and address issues benefiting from such interaction. The Committee on Ethnic Studies can work, for example, with the Committee on Secondary Education to help develop innovative curricula to make international scholars and scholarship more accessible in secondary school education programs. The two committees can also work together to facilitate outreach so that broader and more diverse audiences of secondary-level students gain exposure to important American Studies-sponsored activities. Similarly, the Committee on Ethnic Studies can lend support to the Students’ Committee by, for example, encouraging applications for travel grants by graduate students working in Ethnic Studies as a means of increasing their participation in ASA.
The importance of this liaison role cannot be over-emphasized. Ethnic Studies scholars and scholarship exist in no single space but without the support and abiding attention of a standing Committee on Ethnic Studies the scholars and scholarship face the real possibility of having no space.
A Committee on Ethnic Studies will organize an annual seminar on Comparative Ethnic Studies and will submit an annual request for a slot in the ASA conference program for this seminar.
One of the most important elements of Ethnic Studies is doing comparative ethnic and racial work. Fully realized, Ethnic Studies serves as a space where scholars and scholarship in so-called “area studies” can exist in mutually satisfying and informative ways. To cite but one example, the African American experience cannot be completely understood without an informed sense of the Latino experience in the Americas. The ASA is perfectly positioned to be a leader in this critical area of knowledge as it branches out in new and important directions.
The Task Force envisions that this seminar-held at the annual ASA conference, perhaps before the Minority Scholars and Women’s Committee reception-will serve as place for discussions to happen across Ethnic Studies Programs and scholarship, involving the critical debates and issues relevant to Ethnic Studies, African American Studies, Asian American Studies, Chicano/Latino Studies, and Native American Studies. This seminar, whose specific theme would be determined annually by the members of the committee, will become a common ground that exists at the intersections of and bridges the chasms between discrete area studies programs and departments and the scholars who work in these fields.
Possible programmatic initiatives
While the Task Force expects the membership of the Committee on Ethnic Studies to determine its own agenda beyond the basic elements described above, the Task Force members believe that there are at least two specific initiatives that the committee might find it profitable to explore. The Task Force offers the following simply as starting points for future conversations and initiatives.
With its presence in the ASA hierarchy institutionalized, the Committee on Ethnic Studies would be positioned to develop linkages between other national organizations and the American Studies Association. There are already official relationships to other learned societies, but there exists a need to develop relationships with organizations like the National Association for Chicana/Chicano Studies, the Collegium of African American Research, and the Asian American Studies Association, to cite but three. While remaining mindful that the ASA could appear to some of these groups to have an imperialist project in mind, such cross-organization affiliations would only strengthen the participating groups. Creating cross-organization relationships at the leadership level could work to increase the respective groups’ membership roles and could facilitate a more complex understanding of the constantly contingent and ever-evolving nature of this nation, its relationship to its citizens, and its place in the world.
The Committee on Ethnic Studies could work on important internal projects such as the creation of new American Ethnic Studies Prizes. The committee could also address the fact that except for the Ralph Henry Gabriel Prize and the Lora Romero Prize, current American Studies prizes do not explicitly or implicitly articulate the possibility that Ethnic Studies scholarship might also compete for association prizes.
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