Chicana scholar Teresa Córdova states: “In the struggle to give voice to our experiences, working class people of color encounter multiple mechanisms meant to silence us.”[2] One form of silencing includes institutions threatening educators with lost tenure for “daring” to teach Latinas/os Studies. Comprising a “war over knowledge,” as an example is seen in the present struggle to derail Chicana/o Latino Studies (“CLS”) at Michigan State University.

This recent version of “silencing Latinas/os” initially involved the arbitrary and capricious working and disparate educational conditions for CLS faculty and graduate/undergraduate students. Rather than protect the students however, and through a pattern and practice of heavy hand tactics MSU administrators are employing and re-directing the facts to ultimately eliminate CLS at MSU.

The struggle began after CLS faculty appointed a new director for undergraduate students. Thereafter the director initiated a series of confrontations and polarizing events that alienated many undergraduate and graduate CLS students (both female and male) and faculty members (both female and male). All attempts to meet with the director to resolve the issues were rejected with statements that there was “no problem.”

The “no problem” position however is difficult to reconcile with the director verbally harassing students and faculty members. Students faced threats of retaliation such as in withholding student funding. Attempts of the director to drive senior faculty from their office and students from their study space at CLS also provoked difficult situations. Harassment of both witnessed the director changing the outside door lock to the inner CLS suites; gratuitously charging both male and female students with sexual harassment or sex discrimination; following a pre-arranged bus trip of students and faculty to another state with ensuing harassment and intimidation of the class and its faculty during the outings presentations and dinner. In sum, the whole culture, learning environment and production of knowledge within CLS shifted thereby causing students to flee to libraries and cafeterias and other safe places to study.

Rather than attempt to resolve the issues the director went outside the program and garnered the “support” of individuals who were neither involved in CLS, nor ever attended faculty meetings. Support for the director followed from individuals who were never locked out of their offices, nor witnessed or experienced any of the above hostile working conditions and educational environment. In one situation a MSU police officer called a student at home stating their protests “had to cease” in violation of administration and due process law.

Following faculty governance procedures the faculty resolved to vote to remove the Director but the Dean instead formed a Task Force. To hear the Dean in her charge which also included the option of removing the Director, go to: http://xicanocenter.org/sound/MSUGradMeetingwithDeanBabaApril2009Excerpt.mp3

Comprised of graduate and undergraduate students, faculty as well as outsiders who had not attended faculty meetings, and after extensive testimonies from students and faculty the Task Force voted to remove the Director. The Dean however falsely and publicly reversed her earlier position and stated she had not given the Task Force the option of recommending the director’s removal. To the present the administration refuses to follow its own earlier mandate.

The above does not reflect the theoretical praxis that shapes the contours of CLS; nor is this an instance of gendered politics (recall female students and female faculty have all witnessed direct injuries). Neither is this an instance of the war over gendered identity politics (as the director asserts). The bottom line is that gendered identity politics obligate primary facts and evidence. And the primary facts and the Dean’s systemic shifting countervailing edicts reveal a hostile working and educational environment with attendant extra-legal harm to CLS students and faculty.

Yet an additional lesson remains. Specifically on top of failing to resolve the formally filed faculty and student grievances the fundamental issue emerging is that the University is on course to dissolve CLS. The University has responded to students’ not by addressing their legitimate concerns and grievances, but instead by retaliation and threats.

Further primary facts and evidence show that in a blatant disregard or faculty governance and due process the faculty names were removed from the CLS website. Even more egregious, upper level administration pressured faculty chairs from other units to threaten junior faculty who are protesting the director’s divisive administration and thereby rendering their potential tenure at MSU vulnerable. In one instance such pressures ultimately caused the constructive discharge of a junior Chicano faculty professor with much regret and disappointment to the remaining CLS faculty, students and supporters and causing yours truly to link his forced resignation with Title VII employment discrimination law.

CLS remains at heightened risk moreover when administrators refuse to reconcile the direct harm students’ experienced and without resolving their formally filed grievances. In the present for example the chances of Chicana/o students obtaining funding and teaching assistant posts remains elusive. Meanwhile students face a breach of first amendment rights or are threatened with the loss of inter alia scholarships; and without funding their chances of graduating disappears. The door to CLS elimination thereby, opening even further.

Colonial theory accordingly reveals evidentiary rules are manipulated when newer and arbitrary burdens of proof are shifted and where results do not match what power brokers seek to accomplish. See the Dean’s initial charge with her subsequent public denial of the Task Force’s results. Colonialism over gente de color is accomplished when such administrative recalcitrance “fails” to see causative factors leading to the disparate environmental educational culture at MSU and employ the immediate issues for its own purposes. It is not difficult to comprehend why the Dean has formed yet another Task Force comprised of individuals who publicly demonstrated hostility to CLS. In essence while the students’ are exhaustively challenging their forced alienation from a Program that initially drew them to MSU, the administration is thereby throwing gasoline into a raging fire.

Colonialism is thereby accomplished when long ignored intersectionalities are challenged in the production of knowledge. Recall the loss of tenure for faculty producing Latina/o knowledge, or the firing of the Cordova sisters in New Mexico for teaching Chicana/o histories, and the present forced departure of a CLS professor at MSU. Colonialism is revealed where MSU is not seeking to resolve a disparate educational and employment environment. In contrast and specifically, it is seeking the elimination of CLS and with its ultimate disappearance at stake, the University thereby succeeding in this war over knowledge.

[1]This essay is taken from the public record, through personal interview and direct knowledge. See alsohttp://www.xicanocenter.org/rcls

[2]Teresa Córdova, Power and Knowledge: Colonialism in The Academy, in Living Chicana Theory, 17 (Carla Trujillo ed., 1998).

Source: Nuestras Voces Latinas

I graduated from MSU in 2005 with a Bachelor of Arts in social relations and policy with a Chicano/Latino Studies specialization. One of the main reasons I decided to attend MSU was the fact that its Chicano/Latino Studies program carries an immense amount of prestige throughout Michigan, the Midwest and the nation. Such a statement can be validated by the fact that MSU has one of two Chicano/Latino Studies doctoral programs in the world. I currently am completing my Master of Social Work degree at the University of Michigan and have been contemplating returning to MSU to complete my doctoral degree in Chicano/Latino Studies. However, the turmoil that has been generated by unsupportive and incompetent administrative staff ultimately will have a profound impact on my decision.

I think it is despicable what Dean Marietta Baba and Sheila Contreras are doing to students, staff and the Chicano/Latino Studies program. As a student who was labeled “at-risk” upon my acceptance to MSU, I relied on a supportive and rigorous environment to ensure my academic, personal and professional success. The Chicano/Latino Fellows Program provided the mentorship and guidance necessary to navigate through an unfamiliar and, at times, hostile environment. The students and staff that managed the Chicano/Latino Studies program during my tenure at MSU were invaluable to my current success as a student and as a professional.

I recently was informed the Chicano/Latino Fellows Program was eliminated and so were the hopes and dreams of countless of underrepresented students who rely on the mentorship and support of committed staff and mentors to fulfill their academic and professional aspirations.

It is important to understand the critical importance students and progressive staff played in the establishment of the Chicano/Latino Studies program. Their devotion and perseverance to ensure the development and institutionalization of an intellectually rigorous academic specialization and doctoral program cannot be ignored. Baba and Contreras have generated an oppressive and hostile environment that, not only negates this fact, but also seeks to further marginalize students who are requesting a peaceful resolution to their demands. Contreras continuously has ignored the needs and humbled requests of the Chicano/Latino community and their allies and Baba has endorsed this vicious treatment with her actions.

MSU alumni, the University of Michigan Latin Social Work Coalition, and the multitude of concerned students throughout Michigan and our nation fully support the students, faculty and staff at MSU in their pursuit of social justice for the Chicano/Latino Studies program, the Chicano/Latino community and their allies.

Isaias Solis

2005 MSU graduate

What is needed from the university, however, is justification for why Contreras will remain director, despite complaints from students. Students have accused Contreras of attempting to dismantle the Chicano/Latino Fellows Program, verbally abusing students and creating a list of troublemakers.

Whether or not these accusations are grounded in truth, they are serious and the university has a responsibility to investigate them and communicate to students why or why not Contreras is fit for her position.

CLS controversy resolution requires cooperation