LiberalArtsOnline Volume 3, Number 4
March 2003
by Paul Von Blum
Senior Lecturer, Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies
UCLA
Despite their long record of distinguished intellectual accomplishments, many people, including faculty, students, and laypersons alike, have uninformed, critical, or even hostile views about ethnic studies. Some see them as marginal academic enterprises adding little or nothing to the historical commitment to higher education's liberal arts emphasis. Still others see them as parochial enterprises existing merely to placate the political demands of minority group constituencies on campus and elsewhere.
Both views are mistaken and unfortunate. Since the late 1960s, ethnic studies have made powerful contributions to the liberal arts tradition. By adding substantial material to that tradition, especially in the humanities, arts, and social sciences, ethnic studies programs have had impressive and durable liberal arts effects. In particular, their capacity to catalyze students' intellectual curiosity represents a key historic objective of liberal learning.
Through ethnic studies, thousands of American college and university students have been exposed to subject matter to which they otherwise rarely would have had access. Those from specific racial and ethnic backgrounds, and others from majority cultures, have explored material to which they have had little or no previous exposure. Ethnic studies encourage them to recognize serious historical barriers to American ideals of justice and equality. They also inform students of major cultural accomplishments and political struggles often neglected in traditional educational settings. The intellectual excitement of these discoveries, above all, reflects the major liberal arts effect of African American Studies, Chicano Studies, Asian American Studies, American Indian Studies, and related fields, including Women's Studies.
A major reason for emphasizing liberal arts learning over transitory "practical" training is to encourage students to develop long-term skills in research, critical thinking, and reflection. To accomplish this, they need a commitment to active intellectual investigation enduring a lifetime -- not simply acquiring material to pass examinations and secure admission to favored jobs and professional schools. Discovering the hidden heritage of racial and ethnic cultural and other accomplishments is enormously motivating. It encourages students to explore unfamiliar sources and expand their academic imaginations. Encountering something new, in turn, often generates reflection on what else they may find later. This compelling curiosity, more than the results themselves, is central to liberal learning.
Ethnic studies' interdisciplinary nature similarly promotes the liberal arts tradition. Interdisciplinary education encourages students to seek and discover connections between fields. Disciplinary specialization in American higher education sometimes discourages students from finding linkages in their studies that they inevitably encounter in life. Ethnic studies instructors usually relate their topics to broader historical, political, cultural, and psychological themes. This integrative perspective has influenced many traditional disciplinary colleagues to follow suit. Pursuing linkages between fields of knowledge encourages students to hone their analytic powers and develop intellectual world-views emphasizing complexity, subtlety, and thematic relationships. This more comprehensive perspective also is a primary outcome of liberal arts learning. Ethnic studies curricula promote this result magnificently. They deserve the critical support of the entire academic community.
LiberalArtsOnline is an occasional email essay on the liberal arts, provided as a public service of the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts.
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The comments published in LiberalArtsOnline reflect the opinions of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the Center of Inquiry or Wabash College. Comments may be quoted or republished in full, with attribution to the author, LiberalArtsOnline, and the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts.