Summer Institute 2024
Localizing Ethnic Studies
The Center for Racial Justice (CRJ) at UC Santa Cruz will hold its second bi-yearly Summer Institute, “Localizing Ethnic Studies,” from July 29-31, 2024 at the Resource Center for Nonviolence at 612 Ocean St, Santa Cruz, CA 95060. As always, the Summer Institute is free and open to the public, but priority will be given to registrants who are K-12 teachers, other educators, high school and college students interested in ethnic studies, community members, organizers, and activists. Reflecting CRJ’s core commitment to political education as a tool of collective liberation, each day of the Summer Institute will feature teaching sessions, conversations, and workshops aimed at reimagining ethnic studies not in state-sanctioned, top-down terms but from the perspective of local community knowledge.
Doing so is imperative in a historic juncture in which California stands to be the first state in the nation to implement ethnic studies in K-12 education. Yet this moment of transformative possibility is fraught with danger. Caving to repressive interests, the state has sought to impose ideological “guardrails” around ethnic studies, a field of study that emerged from grassroots anti-imperialist struggle. Motivated by an undemocratic agenda, anti-ethnic studies groups funded by rightwing donors have rushed to offer their own versions of “ethnic studies” curricula, while ethnic studies practitioners who have long fought for the realization of the field have found themselves in the crosshairs of deeply racist, defamatory, and harassing campaigns.
Given what is at stake, this year’s Summer Institute seeks to clarify the power potential of ethnic studies by returning to the grassroots. Rather than approach the field as a set of histories, struggles, and theories exterior to our region, this year’s institute instead focuses on the local as the necessary grounds for the building of ethnic studies as a community-responsive field. Reimagining the greater Santa Cruz region against the implied whiteness of its “surf, sun, sustainable farming, and redwoods” image and self-advertised lure as a Central Coast getaway, the Summer Institute will approach the local as the basis for an ethnic studies curriculum through a focus on place-based histories of not only race and racism, but also, community resistance, people power, and transformative social change.
From Salinas to Berkeley: The Local Roots of the Third World Liberation Front Strike
Monday, July 29, 2024 | 9am - 12pm
A roundtable discussion with TWLF veterans who came of age in Salinas as teenage antiwar activists and labor organizers.
Featured Speakers
Lillian Fabros Bando
Adna Louie
Vicci Wong
[Session 1] Ethnic Studies in Coachella
Tuesday, July 30, 2024 | 9am - 12pm
Testimonial by a teacher-practitioner who helped develop a powerful community-anchored, place-based ethnic studies program in a semi-rural county with similarities to Santa Cruz.
Featured Speaker
Alfonso Tabouda
[Session 2] Education as Liberation: The Struggle for Community-responsive Ethnic Studies in PVUSD
Tuesday, July 30, 2024 | 12:30pm - 3pm
Roundtable with members of Pajaro Valley for Ethnic Studies and Justice, a coalition of parents, students, teachers, organizers, and community members, on the struggle for ethnic studies education in Watsonville and Aptos.
Featured Speakers
Lourdes and Gabriel Barraza
Maximiliano and Ixel Barraza
Eli Davies
Jo Holo
Bobby Pelz
Our Struggles, Our Histories, Our Ethnic Studies: Building a Grassroots Ethnic Studies Curriculum in Santa Cruz County
Wednesday, July 31, 2024 | 9am - 12pm
Community share out and ethnic studies curriculum-building session with local organizations on community-of-color struggles for racial justice in the region.
Featured Organizations and Organizers
Barrios Unidos
MILPA
Omar Dieguez
Resource Center for Nonviolence
Santa Cruz Black
Tobera Project
