On December 17 I reported about Harvard’s denial of tenure to Lorgia García Peña, an associate professor of Romance Languages and Literature and of History and Literature. The denial was approved by President Lawrence Bacow, who has never overturned a faculty recommendation.
Why García Peña was denied tenure is unclear, and we’ll never know for sure as these are secret personnel matters. But looking at her c.v. and publications, my best guess was that she was deficient in scholarship, especially at a place like Harvard where scholarship is the primary requirement for tenure. As I wrote after perusing her c.v.:
Looking at García Peña’swebsite at Harvard, her c.v., and her Google Scholar profile gives me a clue, though. She’s published one book, which seems to be derived from her Ph.D. thesis (another’s under contract, and a third seems to be just a Spanish translation of the published book), but lists only five refereed papers since she began at Harvard in 2013. (There are also four “peer-reviewed” chapters, but in general those things are invited and the “peer review” consists of the comments of reviewers who know the chapter will be published.) Here are the listed papers:
2020 “Lo que dice la piel: Consciencia rayana y solidaridad post-terremoto 2010” Forthcoming in Revista de Estudios Sociales, Santo Domingo, Spring 2020.
2016 “Black in English: Race, Migration, and National Belonging in Postcolonial Italy.” Kalfou 3, no. 2 (2016), 207-229
2015 “Translating Blackness: Dominicans Negotiating Race and Belonging.” The Black Scholar 45, no. 2 (2015): 10-20. Awarded Best Article by Black Scholar,
2015. 2013 “Un-Bordering Hispaniola: David Pérez’s Performance Actions of Haitian-Dominican Solidarity.” Afro-Hispanic Review 32, no. 2 (2013): 57-71.
2013 “Being Black Ain’t So Bad… Dominican Immigrant Women Negotiating Race in Contemporary Italy.” Caribbean Studies 41, no. 2 (2013): 137-161.
For Harvard, this doesn’t seem an outstanding record of scholarship, especially the hiatus between 2016 and 2020.
But because she taught ethnic studies, the students took this as almost a racist move, or at least a slap in the face at continuing efforts by students and some faculty to establish various ethnic studies departments, even though there are already plenty of courses at Harvard that fit the “ethnic studies” curriculum. As the article in today’s New York Times reports (click on screenshot below), the students not only demanded that Harvard give García Peña tenure, but also occupied the administration building, disrupted a faculty meeting, and protested by invading the admissions office.
What is striking about the article is how entitled these students seem. Their demand for ethnic studies rests largely, it appears, on their need to feel “supported” after they are admitted to America’s most prestigious university; indeed, to get help to “understand their own stories.” A few quotes:
And on the day in December that early admissions decisions were to be released, black, Latino and Asian students protested in the admissions office, accusing the university of using them as tokens in its professed commitment to diversity, while failing to invest in academic areas critical to their lives.
. . .Several students who testified during the legal challenge to Harvard’s admissions policies, saying it was important for the school to be able to consider race in admissions, are now among those criticizing the decision to deny tenure to the professor, Lorgia García Peña.
One of them, Catherine Ho, 20, a junior, took part in the December protest at the admissions office, where students held signs with messages like “After You Admit Us, Don’t Forget Us!” and “Want Diversity? Teach Our Histories!”
Ms. Ho, who is Vietnamese-American, accused Harvard of using her and other students who testified to burnish its image at the trial and afterward, while refusing to listen to what they said they needed in terms of resources once they got to campus.
“I am tired of Harvard using my story without giving me ethnic studies so I can fully understand what my story even means,” Ms. Ho said during the protest, to cheers from the other students. She added, “Harvard, stop using our stories when you won’t listen to us.”
. . .“We need more than just letting us in,” said Ms. Veira-Ramirez, who came to the United States from Colombia when she was 3 years old. Ms. Veira-Ramirez, who is undocumented, has protection from deportation under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an Obama-era program that protected young undocumented immigrants.
“We need resources once we get to campus,” she said, “and part of those resources is an ethnic studies program.”
My response to this is severalfold. First, why are minority students seen completely through the lens of their ethnicities? When they have plenty of opportunities to read Latino/Latina literature, Black Literature, and so on, why do they need an entire department to help them “understand what their stories even mean”? And do all Hispanic or black students really have the same story? I doubt it. For one thing, these aren’t your average minority students: they are the best in the country, and are certainly privileged. Their stories must surely be different from the stories of impoverished youth in, say, the ghettoes of Chicago, doomed to lousy schools, an unsupportive environment, and, for many incarceration. Is the “story” always the story of oppression in the past? Is the unifying factor one of pigmentation? Are the stories of Spanish students (considered “students of color”) similar to those of Brazilian students or Guatemalan students? If so, how?
And if skin color (a sign of oppression) is really the unifying factor here, then Harvard’s “ethnic studies” departments will become—like so many of them are in America—grievance studies departments, pushing an ideology of intersectionality and oppression. Harvard does not need departments designed for social engineering rather than knowledge, and I suspect that’s why Harvard hasn’t instituted ethnic studies as a department. Indeed, that’s why I object to ethnic studies. Every Hispanic student is different, just as every Jew is different, and despite Jews having been the most oppressed minority in the last two millennia, I would strongly object to starting a “Jewish studies” program to help Jews figure out “what their stories mean.” If you want your stories, you have to do more than major in a field centered on your ethnicity.
Don’t get me wrong: the story of minorities is an important part of the history of America, and there is much great literature written by “marginalized” people. This should be taught in college. But there are plenty of opportunities to do that already. As the Times notes:
Efforts to create an ethnic studies program at Harvard go back several decades. Undergraduates now have two ways to pursue ethnic studies: Students majoring in history and literature can focus on the subject, and students can minor in ethnicity, migration, rights. The ethnic studies track in history and literature was created in 2017, the minor in 2009. The students who are protesting now want a full-fledged department and the opportunity to major in ethnic studies.
Further, Harvard also has a full department of African and African-American studies. Given that, and the fact that there are tracks for other ethnic studies, like Latin American literature and history, I fail to understand why there’s a need for a whole department of “ethnic studies”. What will the department teach beyond what is available already? Certainly African-American studies have everything they need in their already-existing department.
Given that there are already ethnic studies tracks and lots of courses, the only reason I can see for such a department is to enshrine an ideology at the University, and to bow to students’ demands that they need a department to feel supported. That claim is palpably ridiculous in light of the opportunities already available to learn about the history of minorities.
Of course this constitutes tremendous pressure on Harvard, for if the University refuses to confect a department, they will be called racists and bigots, insufficiently supportive of blacks and Hispanics. (Do they also propose departments of women’s studies and LGBTQ+ studies? Courses and sub-majors in women’s studies already exist in plenitude.)
Make no mistake about it. With no exceptions that I know of, ethnic studies departments are departments of grievance studies, dedicated not to advancing knowledge of the history of various groups, but of pushing a particular narrative of continuing oppression of these groups by the dominant white culture. They are not full of courses urging students to question that narrative. Imbuing students with ideology is very different from filling them with knowledge and teaching them how to think.
Indeed, García Peña herself admitted as much in her writing:
In an online article published last year, Dr. García Peña wrote that ethnic studies programs make universities “a little less racist, a little less white.”
“They provide students with spaces for thinking and writing about important questions,” she wrote. “They also provide support for students of color who are made to feel in every other course, like second class citizens who are reminded that they don’t belong.”
No, they provide students with spaces to absorb the ideology of intersectionality and develop a coherent viewpoint that takes all blacks, or all Hispanics, as sharing one story. Further, I deny her contention that minority students are made to feel like second-class citizens in every other course. That’s the kind of grievance viewpoint that develops in such departments, and, though one is called a racist for saying this, it’s simply not true. I know many professors who teach students of color and go the extra mile to help them if they see the students struggling or the students ask for help. And I have never seen a student of color treated as a second-class student in any class I’ve ever taught or attended, though of course this will happen in some places at some times.
Now clearly Harvard will do something—they almost have to lest they look mean-spirited. But I hope that whatever they do will ensure that new courses will not push a specific ideology of intersectionality and unrelenting oppression, but will adhere to the Harvard motto, “Veritas.” (Truth.)
Is that picture representative of the number of students protesting?
When you first posted about this issue, you linked to Dr. Garcia Pena’s book, and I read the introduction to it. I was stunned at what seemed to me the amateurish level of the writing and thinning of content.
On a related note, it does raise an eyebrow that the NYTimes has given this event that much attention. Especially so, given the relative scant attention it has given to certain events against the ultra-Orthodox and not so Orthodox just a handful of miles from Times Square.
(The New York Post is giving far better and comprehensive coverage of that.)
The reason the Times is covering this protest, which shouldn’t be very consequential enough to merit national coverage, and why the protesters are treated with kids’ gloves, is the same as what Dr. Coyne talked about before re: “furors” and “controversies” involving Larry Summers and Steven Pinker. Many at the Times care a lot about Harvard, and a significant number of people at the Times care about (in support of) left-wing activism. There’s a large overlap in these groups at the Times, and they’re committed to keep these kinds of struggles in the public eye, and by doing so keep up public pressure on the institution. It’s cynical, but I would be unsurprised if people at Times have friends or professional peers they know who would be ideal candidates for the new positions in this “ethnic studies” department. The mutually parasitic nature of these institutions (Harvard/Yale and NYT/NPR/etc) is rendering both of them parochial and focused on petty intramural squabbles, let’s hope we can keep the rot from spreading elsewhere.
I agree with you. What I wonder is the harm it will do to the news organizations….Or do they care?
I am thinking of the insularity that has brought about the “1619 Project”. I can’t help but think that this is how credibility is lost. In fact, I do wonder, despite its great increase in subscriber-ship, whether the NYTimes won’t be a, what?, kind of victim of Trump derangment.
I keep thinking of myself, a devoted Times reader/subscriber for 35+ years who about 2 years ago dropped that subscription out of fatigue and finding too much activism and questionable journalism/reporting.
Perhaps part of the issue here is that, because people keep telling these kids that they are different, they don’t realize that every one of their peers is trying to figure out the same questions for themselves, regardless of their background. (Hell, I am not sure I found out “my story” until I was forty.) Undoubtedly, in the US our ethnic backgounds can be part of this, but it is not the totality of it, or maybe even the majority of it. Ghettoizing themselves in ethic studies may not give these students their answers, but it sure won’t give them an education.
I’m quite certain there were significant chunks of “my story” that I didn’t discover until several years after I’d written a full stop to it. It seems that I was definitely not the last to know, even amongst those with a credible claim of a “right to know”.
I fear I didn’t even know I had a “story”. I now feel deprived and marginalized. Is it too late for an old white guy to find his “story” and, if not, and I do find it, will someone then tell me what my story means? Whom should I badger for not doing this? Where should I file my whines?
Another old white guy. My thoughts exactly. If I do develop a compulsion to find “my story”, then I can perhaps read some books, do a bit of googling, etc. Why would I need a dedicated university department to assist me?
Harvard already has a top-notch Anthropology Department. I think they know a few things about ethnic studies.
Garcia-Peña feels “like second class citizen” in Astronomy class because neither Galileo nor the moon are, alas, a Dominican Black woman. The various minority students resent their “token” status at Harvard because they are still in the minority. With Grievance Studies departments of their own, they will feel majority, dominant.
My own group, the Marginalized/Oppressed Hot Dog Peoples’ Liberation Front, offers a simple solution: we redefine arithmetic so that any random group of people is defined as 51% Black, 51% Brown, 51% Latino, 51% black Dominican female, 51% Native American, 51% Samoan, 51% Vietnamese, 51% LGBTQ, etc. etc..
That CV wouldn’t get somebody reappointment at Brown, let alone tenure. And Brown ain’t Harvard.
I would like to hear a discussion of the requirements of publishing or lack of it as a disqualification for tenure. Seems as if other factors could compensate.
Also the lack of disclosure on why tenure was denied.
As to thus case, demanding a department as part of a protest against lack of tenure fir thus individual seems to be mixing the issues.
Students always make demands or one thing or another. Ability to negotiate should perhaps be one if the skills needed to obtain tenure.
The requirements for publishing at a place like Harvard are stringent. It is THE most important thing you need to do to get tenure, and no other activity, least of all teaching, can compensate.
No university, much less Harvard, reveals exactly why tenure was denied. They require confidentiality in such matters lest they get a less than objective evaluation. Of course, threats of lawsuits also contribute, but you’re asking for the moon here.
I could see Harvard giving tenure to someone primarily for teaching…but that ‘someone’ would be at the end of their career, a globally known expert in their field with all the publication history already accomplished.
I could also see Harvard giving tenure to someone with a thin current publication record if they had one or more huge research grant awards coming in. In that case, the tenure award is recognizing the researcher’s expected future publications (and the grant awardee’s own vetting of the researcher) rather than past ones.
But otherwise, like Ms. Janis and PCC, I really can’t Dr. Pena’s publication history being commensurate with a tenure award at a top-notch research university. I’d think that the person Harvard would be looking for to teach Ethnic Studies would be the sort of person who had already single-handedly created an Ethnic Studies department at another school through grants that funded additional researchers and their ensuing publications – not someone who needs Harvard’s help to do that.
Sub
What do the rich always say – more money. What do the privileged always want, more privileges. I think these must be natures laws. Human nature that is.
I find it interesting that these students decided to study at Harvard despite its lack of an ethnic studies department. As they managed to get accepted by Harvard they must have had their choice universities at which to study, so why not go somewhere that already has one. Surely that’s how the “marketplace” of higher education should work these days? It is like shopping at Walmart and then complaining about the poverty level wages many of the associates enjoy!
I suspect that those students know having Harvard on their CV is much more important than a degree in ethnic studies.
People here may be interested to learn about the longest student strike on record. It took place in the late ’60s at San Francisco State, and was led by a consortium of minority students who were protesting over the lack of ethnic studies and the lack of courses about history other than white European history. You can learn more here:
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/03/21/704930088/the-student-strike-that-changed-higher-ed-forever
The result had far reaching effects through all universities. It’s actually quite a story.
And here is what that call got them…
http://americanloons.blogspot.com/2015/05/1369-yosef-ben-jochannan.html
“…primarily on ancient Nile Valley civilizations and their perceived impacts on Western cultures, where he argues that the original Jews were from Ethiopia and were Black Africans (Moses was black, for instance), while the white Jews later stole the Jewish faith and its customs.”
http://americanloons.blogspot.com/2017/02/1790-leonard-jeffries.html
” according to Jeffries, failed to recognize that Jews financed the slave trade and have later used the movie industry to hurt black people; in particular, “Russian Jewry had a particular control over the movies, and their financial partners, the Mafia, put together a financial system of destruction of black people.” So, not only were they racist; there was a genuine “conspiracy, planned and plotted and programmed out of Hollywood” by “people called Greenberg and Weisberg and Trigliani …”
americanloons.blogspot.com/2015/02/1298-hunter-adams.html
“According to Adams, the ancient Egyptians were black and their culture ancestral to African-Americans. They also flew around in gliders and were the inventors of most of modern science…”
??!! Well, that’s quite a hatchet job. As if that is what all that came from this.
What they got, not just at this one university but over the whole country, was a sea-change in recognizing that the history and culture of other people deserves inclusion into academia. New faculty lines and whole departments emerged. Yes, we can describe now how these disciplines have de-volved in part into grievance studies. But there is still plenty good in there.
Found this (Non-Harvard PhD) explaining evolution: Website redacted
Excuse me? You traipse over here and advertise your own post on your own website on a post that doesn’t have anything to do with you.
Sorry, pal, but you don’t go trolling over here to call attention to your own site.
I tend to interpret this type of thing much more sympathetically when perpetuated by the very young. Juvenile behavior is expected for actual juveniles, after all. At this age, it seems like another version of writing A Very Dramatic Screenplay About Your Backpacking Trip Through Europe, which others will find just *fascinating.* I think it’s somewhat age appropriate for kids this age to see themselves as the unique hero in the center of some sort of epic human drama, embattled on all fronts. The problem is when those who should have a broader perspective don’t or can’t provide a counterbalance.
I agree; undergrads are in part practicing being adults, and part of that includes practicing how to stand up for what you believe is right…we don’t have to think they’re doing it correctly to recognize that the effort probably helps them mature.
But with that being said, there’s really no reason for Harvard to give them what they want. Learning to deal professionally with failure is also a skill they must master to be an adult. 🙂
Caveat Emptor, kids. You applied to a school with no Ethnic studies program. You accepted at a school with no Ethnic studies program. Then you are upset that there’s no Ethnic studies program?
This would be like applying and accepting at MIT, and then getting upset to find out that a significant amount of the school’s resources go to various engineering programs.
You sum it up rather nicely. Thanks.
Maybe I have misunderstood something, but it seems as if these students understand “Ethnic Studies” as the possibility of studying the culture from which their ancestors came so they can understand their roots. This is hardly realistic since there must be scores of backgrounds, many of which involved moving to America to avoid oppression, ever since the Pilgrim Fathers who were fleeing religious persecution in Europe, or the Irish forced to emigrate because of the potato famine.
Moreover, even without ever having taken a class in one, I would bet good money that an Ethnic Studies department would make their majors take classes that covered a variety of cultures, not just the one from which the student’s ancestors came.
One would hope so.
I think the Pilgrims had a perfectly fine spot in Europe and were not particularly persecuted. What they desired was the power and place to be absolute masters of their domain = persecute anyone else who got in their way. Plus, they needed to be isolated to keep people toeing the oppressive line. The young were being inveigled in Holland! Like so many crazies throughout history, the answer is to seek separation and isolation to enforce conformity.
Maybe they just didn’t want to deal with the Papists or the Church of England Mary clap-trap.
But hey, I’m sure Chewy would love to live in a country like Ireland in the good old days, with criminal penalties on abortion and restrictions on birth control, and maybe a bomb or two on the way home from the Ulster football game.
Maybe if Harvard had let in a few more of all those high-scoring Asian students with the “terrible personalities”, and scuttled more of the low-scoring non-Asians possessing all that “sparkle”, they wouldn’t have to listen to all this activist kvetching.
If you were not academically prepared for Harvard, wouldn’t you want a department that spoon-feed you grievance ideology and gave you grades based on your surname, melanin count and your ability to regurgitate the Gospel of Intersectionality?
Without all the taboos around racism (and I’m not talking about actual racism-because racial reductionism is what intersectionality is all about-but b.s. allegations of “racism”), this stuff wouldn’t stand up for 10 seconds.
Imagine a department of Marxist-Leninism where grades are assigned based on your ability to uncritically regurgitate Stalinist propaganda? How long would that last at a Research University like Harvard if you couldn’t get everyone to back down by calling them a “racist”? Higher education is suffering from a lack of intestinal fortitude.