Brouhaha Continues

Sunday, October 16, 2022

Sometimes yours truly falls a bit behind in keeping track of UC and UCLA events. Among the controversial issues currently under review is a requirement that applicants for the UC undergraduate program take an ethnic studies course in high school. What such a course should include, i.e., who the course should cover and in what way, has proven to be contentious. Ten days ago, the following item appeared in the Bruin. Excerpt:

A UCLA professor serving on the Academic Senate broke policy by leaking internal communications about a proposed ethnic studies requirement for freshman undergraduate admission to the University of California. [The individual], a professor of education and psychology, is a member of the UCLA Academic Senate’s Committee on Undergraduate Admissions and Relations with Schools. He was the committee’s 20212022 representative to the UC Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools, a committee deliberating on a proposed A-G ethnic studies requirement.

After the board’s May meeting where the proposal received pushback, two of the requirement’s course criteria authors released a joint statement defending the requirement. They said they were informed that the board would now be seeking a broader requirement including social justice, diversity and inclusion courses. In the joint statement, the proposal’s authors expressed criticism of this decision. In emails obtained by The Bruin, [the individual involved] – who is also the director of the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing – forwarded communications from members of BOARS criticizing the joint statement’s tone and content to... a professor of astronomy and physics who opposes the proposed ethnic studies requirement...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2022/10/04/li-cai-breaks-uc-academic-senate-policyby-leaking-internal-emails.

As you will note from the excerpt, yours truly has omitted the names involved, although you can readily find them from the source article. Obviously, this topic has created strains and stress in the Academic Senate. It's best in such cases to avoid a Good Guys versus Bad Guys approach to the issue. One background factor that yours truly finds has been omitted in the discussion is that high school and elementary school students have fallen behind in the pandemic in many California public school districts and many students seem to have dropped out of the system entirely. Some districts in the pre-pandemic period were having difficulty with delivering the "traditional" subjects required by UC for admission. Adding more requirements or changing the existing requirements will be a challenge.

To hear the text above, click on the link below:

https://ia601402.us.archive.org/25/items/big-ten/ethnic%20controversy.mp3