May 20, 2021
Since students led a 23-day hunger strike in 1995 to institute the Asian American Studies Program, the demands of activists have continued to be linked to ethnic studies at Northwestern.
Starting in 2006, students and faculty advocated for the creation of the Latina and Latino Studies Program, which began around 2008, according to LLSP Director and Prof. Geraldo Cadava.
After the programs were established, students continued to push for the expansion of ethnic studies through events, discussions with faculty and administrators and numerous petitions. Student advocacy has been central to creating AASP and LLSP majors and minors, expanding the curriculum and increasing hiring in ethnic studies, according to AASP Director and Prof. Nitasha Sharma.
On the sixth anniversary of Chicago’s reparations ordinance, local activists and scholars discussed police abolition, collective approaches to community organizing and healing from state violence in a Thursday discussion.
The event, hosted by the Council for Race and Ethnic Studies in its inaugural spring speaker event “Abolitionist Futures,” was moderated by Asian American Studies Prof. Patricia Nguyen.
The discussion and Q&A featured founder of Black Lives Matter Chicago and co-executive director of the Chicago Torture Justice Center Aislinn Pulley, and Prof. Dylan Rodriguez, who teaches media and cultural studies at the University of California at Riverside.
The conversation began with an acknowledgement of Chicago’s reparations legislation anniversary and the role of community organizing, especially from incarcerated individuals and police violence survivors, in the passage of the historic law.
Faculty Senate to vote on increasing Senate representation
February 10, 2021
Even though NU gave the Asian American Studies and the Latina and Latino Studies Programs the ability to hire, promote and tenure faculty in 2018, those faculty are still not all represented on the Faculty Senate. Tomorrow, the Senate will vote on a proposition to base Senate representation on tenure home units in addition to departments.
“There are currently 97 Senate seats and so if we did this, that would bring us up to 98,” Economics Prof. Mark Witte said at the January Faculty Senate meeting. “It doesn’t particularly change the value of the franchise, but it does seem like the cleanest way to make sure that everybody has at least some Senator they can go to with their concerns.”