Help Us Improve Diversity and Social Justice Education at UCSD

Dear UCSD community member:

Tomorrow (April 16), from 4:00pm to 5:45pm in Center Hall 212, the TMC administration will hold a "town hall" meeting to present the findings of the DOC curriculum committee review to the Thurgood Marshall faculty. As many of you know, the curriculum committee was appointed after numerous protests last spring against "the watering down" of the DOC curriculum, and the dismissal of two TAs for criticizing the direction of the program.

The committee assigned to review the DOC curriculum largely agreed with the LZC's own critique: that the curriculum has lost its cohesiveness and critical insight, that the university is in danger of abandoning diversity and social justice education at the lower-division level, and that the program needs to stop hiring poorly qualified adjunct faculty and instead recruit faculty who are experts in the fields of ethnic studies, critical race theory, gender and queer studies, American studies, third world studies, Black/Latino/a/Chicano/a/Asian-American studies.

The TMC administration and the University at large has made no motion to endorse its own report, and we are afraid that it will be "buried" as it did not say what the administration expected or wanted to hear. What we need now is for the TMC and University administration to hear that students, faculty, and staff care about lower-division education at UCSD, about diversity education, and about social justice on campus.

Please come to the meeting, bring questions, and invite your friends to come.

If you are professor, it doesn't matter if you are affiliated with TMC or not. Please attend so that you can listen to and comment on the committe's findings. Your input will be appreciated and it will show the university that our faculty members are concerned about the erosion of critical social justice education in this university.

Let's make sure that TMC's claims about its commitment to social justice are not merely a marketing tool or an empty promise to appease individuals who care about diversity in a post-Prop. 209 era.

It's time to press the University administration to show us that its commitment to diversity education is real.

See you there,

LZC