Ethnic Studies Redux: Professor Rudy Acuña Still Has Work to Do

Jeff Biggers: When you served as the founding chair of Chicana and Chicano Studies at CSUN in 1969, where did you think the program would be in 50 years? And describe areas in which you think it has and has not achieved such a vision.

Rudy Acuña: Frankly, I knew I was one of 50 Chicano PhDs, so I just wanted to get it started and then transfer to a more leisurely environment. However, when I saw the challenge I was seduced. I had taught grades 1-12 and community college. Also, this was after the East LA Blowouts and I knew it was important to give these students who had been shortchanged by the schools a place to succeed. Mexicans could learn, so I gradually was seduced. I had no vision for the future, but I knew education and being a structuralist at heart developed curriculum. For me education is about motivation and then teaching skills. I was fortunate to build not only PhDs but good teachers such as Gerald Resendez and later Jorge Garcia, who without we would not have survived. The reality is that we were a teaching institution and it was our job to equip them with the skills to succeed. Nothing fancy. I never thought that the program would grow as much as it has because the initial enrollment was just not there. So we concentrated on leveling the ground. 

JB:  This past winter, CSUN revoked the naming of its main library after former President Delmar T. Oviatt, which CSUN students had objected to for years, dating back to his crackdown on student protests and failure to support cultural studies programs.  Two years ago, the Students of Color Coalition wrote an open letter noting “the evidence of racism on campus is invisible to those who have not studied the origins and progression of history in our university,” and called out “the traditional role university administrators have played” in this process.  How would you describe the role of former President Diane Harrison in this regard, who recently retired after eight years of overseeing major changes at CSUN?

RA: President Harrison was clueless. You had the feeling that she followed advice. The Fall 2020 Issue of CSUN Magazine had a cover of her commemorating her resignation. The magazine appeared to be a memorial to a white campus and featured few people of color, almost to the point that it was to attract foreign students to CSUN. Although the CSUN is roughly 42 percent Latino there were few brown faces. Harrison was not only following advice but following orders. She was a puppet. The Chancellor too promoted her not for her abilities, but because she was close to him. She was the president of the smallest campus in the CSU Monterey Bay. To put it bluntly, she was a cheerleader who was very close to the Chancellor. 

JB: As universities struggle with Covid and post-Covid scenarios, state budget issues and crises, how do you see Chicana and Chicano Studies and all Ethnic Studies programs building on their legacies, their decades of engagement with students, staff, faculty and the local communities, and evolving over the next decade at institutions like CSUN and across the country? 

RA: It depends. Both CHS and the Ethnic Studies are fighting over the crumbs; we will be getting the major share just because we have more students of Chicana/oLatina/o backgrounds. However, if we are committed to ethnic studies we should be part of the solution. First, African American enrollment has fallen to 3.6%—it should be at least 10%, however this would be at odds with the business model of the neoliberal university. But we will not truly reflect LA until Black Americans are part of our community, so a priority should be to rebuild African American Studies. So, we should have a capstone course called Ethnic Studies team-taught by all departments in the family. This is the perfect time since we can include images reflecting the multiplicity of CSUN. The pandemic is not an excuse for mediocrity. 

JB:  In 2015, you wrote extensively about your concerns over neoliberalism in academia, called it the worst threat to education.  You noted: “In order to offset the lack of public funding, administrators have raised tuition with students becoming the primary consumers and debt-holders. Institutions have entered into research partnerships with industry shifting the pursuit of truth to the pursuit of profits. To accelerate this “molting,” they have “hired a larger and larger number of short-term, part-time adjuncts.” This has created large armies of transient and disposable workers who “are in no position to challenge the university’s practices or agitate for “democratic rather than monetary goals.” 

RA:  Yes, neoliberalism is hegemonic. It affects all minority communities. Unfortunately, Chicana/os and others begin to identify more with the institution than they do with their own people. That is why you have so many Hispanics for Trump. They take on the identification of the oppressor. I can say that we produced or educated more Chicana/o teachers than any institution, but cannot get even a $100 for scholarships. They identify with the beauty of the buildings rather than the needs of the immigrant and in-need students. In the past, when they were here, students paid $10 a semester and an apartment was $85 a month. Now, a bed in a dorm is $900 a month. They have to buy meal tickets because the refrigerators and the stoves have been removed. There is no feeling of community or feeling responsibility to the poor. CSUN is a teachers college. My parents were immigrants, my grandparents were immigrants and my wife is an immigrant. I will not follow any rules or laws that discriminate against them. The education and protection of immigrants is my number one priority.  We should care!