The Ethnic Studies Debate in California
As an education reporter, I am always looking for good news at my pace. So I perked up in 2016 when sources in California started buzzing about a Stanford University study showing that ethnic studies classes in San Francisco had helped improve grades and attendance among teens at risk of dropping out .
That research convinced policymakers, and after flirting with the idea for years, California education officials began writing a state curriculum in ethnic studies. In 2021, state lawmakers and Governor Gavin Newsom passed a law requiring high schools to offer an ethnic studies course by 2025, and making the subject a requirement for high school graduation beginning with the class of 2030.
Over the past month, I've been exploring how that mandate is expanding across the state — and why the war between Israel and Hamas has made the effort much more complicated.
The main tension comes down to the difference between what many lawmakers thought they were getting when they voted for ethnic studies—a kind of broad multicultural curriculum rooted in local history—and what ethnic studies actually is, as defined by university scholars with doctorates in the history. field.
The discipline has roots in student activism in the Bay Area in the 1960s against racism, segregation, colonialism and militarism. It mainly focuses on four groups: black Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans and Native Americans. And the Palestinian experience of displacement is central to ethnic studies.
Some scholars see the situation of the Palestinians as perhaps the most crucial contemporary example of the pattern of settler colonialism that brought Europeans to the Americas and led to the displacement and genocide of Native Americans.
Jewish Californians have a wide range of views on the war between Israel and Hamas and on Israeli politics in general. But almost from the beginning of discussions about California's ethnic education curriculum, Jewish groups in the state have expressed concerns about it—not just about how Israel would be discussed in the classroom, but also about how central Israeli- Palestinian conflict would stand. .
They fear that teaching about the conflict, without giving equal attention to many other foreign humanitarian crises, would portray Jews as oppressors and sow anti-Semitism.
The California Department of Education has asked schools to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in their world history courses, and not in ethnic studies. But some ethnic studies scholars and educators have rejected this approach. They say the conflict is a crucial topic in their field — not only because teens see so many discussions about the war on social media and naturally worry about it, but also because Palestinian and Arab-American students deserve to have their own histories reflected seen in the curriculum.
I hope you'll read my article, which delves into this debate in detail and explains the lawsuits, course materials, and activism that may impact the way ethnic studies is taught in your own community.
Dana Goldstein is an education reporter for The New York Times.
And before you go: good news
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has named two packs of wolves discovered in the state last summer.
The two new packs, called the Beyem Seyo Pack and the Harvey Pack, were discovered in Plumas County and Lassen County, bringing the total number of known active wolf packs in California to five.
In his quarterly reportthe department noted the existence of several other small packs of wolves, as well as individual wolves spotted throughout the state.
The news, The Center for Biological Diversity reported this last month, a nonprofit organization that protects endangered animals, is a welcome development for California's wolf population. Gray wolves are native to California, but were nearly hunted to extinction in the 1920s. They are now protected under state and federal endangered species laws.
“Wolves belong in our state,” Amaroq Weiss, a senior wolf advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement, “and we must do everything we can to ensure they thrive.”
Thank you for reading. We'll be back tomorrow.
PS Here it is today's mini crossword.
Soumya Karlamangla, Maia Coleman and Briana Scalia contributed to California Today. You can reach the team via CAtoday@nytimes.com.
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