By Michael J. Trejo
The Harvard Crimson (April 18, 2012)

This weekend’s 15th Annual Latino Law Policy and Business Conference celebrated the rise of Latinos in the U.S. and Latin America, but also revealed Harvard’s most glaring weakness: After forty years, a Latino Studies Center is still missing on campus.

Among the topics discussed at the Conference, which featured former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, was a session focused on the possibility of a Latino Studies Center at Harvard and hosted by the Harvard Latino Student Alliance, a university-wide student organization. The session is part of a wider HLSA campaign that aims to establish a Latino Studies Center at Harvard University.

The motivation is simple: If you were a Colombian student or professor, would you go to the Argentine Center for support? If you were Ghanaian, would you get a degree in Nigerian Studies? Why should a U.S. Latino restrict themselves to issues and studies about Latin America? It essentially neglects their experience north of the border and ignores the fact that Latinos have a range of identities that include aspects of their countries of origin and the United States.

Since 1994, the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies has been a great resource to students on campus. But the Center’s leadership also recognizes that their charter, focused on Latin America, cannot provide adequate coverage of the “U.S.” part of the Latino identity. In fact, in our Spring 2011 efforts to establish HLSA, the Rockefeller Center was unable to serve as our sponsoring entity because of this very issue. Fortunately, our application to become a university-wide organization received the support of Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership, which has been an incredible resource and partner and is a key reason why HLSA exists today.

If the proposition is so clear, then why doesn’t Harvard already have a Latino Studies Center? For nearly forty years, students, faculty and staff have asked the same question. Earlier attempts to establish a Center in 1971, 1979, 1993, 2001, and 2005 were all rebuffed by Harvard administration.

Resistance to the creation of a Latino Studies Center has taken several different forms. One argument, called “Balkanization,” holds that focusing on a single ethnic group encourages disunity. But this argument has already been played out and found its conclusion. Nearly every other elite institution long ago established a center for Latino Studies. Both Yale and Stanford founded centers in 1977 and Columbia founded theirs in 1920.

What seems like just an academic argument is becoming an explicit strategic imperative. Harvard is simply losing out in the battle to attract and retain the nation’s top Latino talent. The Medical School is training fewer Latinos to become future physicians than the national average, at a time when the needs of the healthcare system demand the opposite. And in 2010, Harvard ranked 3rd among elite institutions, behind Columbia and Stanford, in the number of Hispanic Ph.Ds graduated, despite graduating more Ph.Ds in total.

This inability to maintain pre-eminence among students extends to faculty as well. Harvard’s vaunted History department has been without a tenured professor of Latin American history for years. The Business School and the Law School have a dearth of faculty with core expertise on U.S. Latino issues. Of those faculty members who led previous proposals for a Center in 2001 and 2005, many have left for opportunities at competing universities.

And we have yet to mention the growth of the Latino population. By 2020, the U.S. Department of Education projects that Latinos will make up more than one out of every six postsecondary students. This will affect Harvard’s future candidate pool and therefore its campus environment. Current Latino students are disillusioned with the University’s continued refusal to make a commitment, and Latino alumni-of all schools-are growing tired as well.

But despite our frustration with the lack of support, we care deeply about Harvard. For HLSA and its members, it is as much in our interests, as well as in those of the University, to maintain Harvard’s pre-eminence among all groups domestic and international. There have been enough discussions and proposals of what a Latino Studies Center could look like to be able to launch an initiative very quickly. All that is needed is a commitment from the University.

We urge President Drew Faust to put aside the mistakes of previous administrations and work with us in establishing, after so many years, a Latino Studies Center at Harvard. Students, faculty, staff and alumni want it. And the University needs it.

Michael J. Trejo is pursuing a joint Master’s in Public Policy and Master’s in Business Administration at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School, graduating in 2013. He is the President of the Harvard Latino Student Alliance, a university-wide student organization.

By
Rodolfo F. Acuña

When the great Muhammad Ali was asked how many sit ups he did, he responded, “I don’t count my sit-ups, I only start counting when it starts hurting, that is when I start counting, because then it really counts, that’s what makes you a champion.”

These words resonate in Tucson where Latina/o students are fighting for an education by sitting-in in the office of Tucson Unified School District Superintendent of Schools John Pedicone, walking out of classes, demonstrating, and taking to the streets.

Students are dispelling the myth that Mexican Americans do not care about education; they have started counting because it hurts. They know the difference between being warehoused, sitting through classes where teachers go through the motions. They know when the subject matter is relevant; and the teachers believe in what they are teaching.

At my own campus at California State University Northridge students are mobilizing. Up until now, a small minority protested the rising cost of tuition, which now tops $5,550 a year, promising to climb another 30 percent next year.

Because of the lack of accessibility to education, they are growing disillusioned with our system of government. They don’t believe the promises of President Barack Obama State of the Union. Desperate, many students are dropping out of school. The straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back occurred this week.

CSU Chancellor Charles Reed issued a threat to all state campuses that any institution that exceeded its target enrollment by more than three percent would be docked $7 million. The CSUN administration panicked and froze classes, not allowing needy students to enroll in classes, even when professors agreed to take them as an overload.

The result has been pandemonium. Many students are unable to get the requisite 12 units for financial and other scholarship aid. This action takes money out needy students’ pockets; the tuition for 12 units and 19 units is the same. Graduation will be deferred by a couple of years. For administrators earning $120,000 – $350,000 annually it is no big deal. But for poor and middle-class students it is a big deal.

The freeze has forced many students to start counting. It has dawned on them that they are being shut out of what the Tucson students are fighting for, a college education. Conservatives have always maintained that everyone has an equal opportunity; tragically many poor people believed that the myth.

However, this fairytale is being debunked by what is happening in California’s community colleges. Once a safety net where students could attend college almost tuition free and could live close to home and work, this is no longer the case.

Although the fees are still affordable at the two year colleges, the campuses have been flooded consequent to the pushdown of students who qualify for the University of California and the California State University systems but can’t afford it. Consequently, the problem for community colleges is not so much tuition but the flood of students that have drowned them.

Filled beyond capacity their infra-structures have been inundated, and even when students are matriculated they face the impossible task of getting classes. This situation promises to worsen as the UC resorts to the vigorous recruiting of wealthy foreign and out of state students who are displacing residents.

If by this time, we are not counting, we should be because the hurt will worsen.

The challenge for students is to develop a strategy. It is not going to do us any good to say I told you so or to get angry. We have to get even. The reason the system will continue as if the crash never happened is because we did not get even. Very few people have gone to jail, and the gaggle of thieves on Wall Street and government were not stigmatized.

Talk about class warfare, society differentiates between white and blue collar crime. Pure and simple, we are complicit and let the big ones get away.

In Tucson, the rich benefit directly from the destruction of the Mexican American Studies program. Brutalizing immigrants and Latino students is part of the grand strategy to keep Mexicans in their place.

The assassination of nine-year old Brisenia Flores in her home sent a chilling to other Mexicans. Shawna Forde, who had ties with the Minutemen and FAIR, the Federation For American Immigration Reform, led the assassins, but the truth be told, the Tucson white elite were complicit, they benefited.

Let me be clear, the purpose for the destruction of the MAS program was to intimidate other minorities. African, Native and other Americans were put on notice that they will suffer a similar fate if they protest too loudly. They heard about Mexican American students being forced to stand by while the banned books were boxed and carted away. Students watched in silence, they sobbed. Books had become important to them.

In the past I have spoken about Adolph Hitler’s “The Big Lie.” In that instance, the Jews and the gypsies were scapegoated. Hitler used hate to rally the German people. In a similar way, the anti-Mexican and anti-foreign hysteria helps conceal the criminality of ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council) that owns the Arizona state legislature and SALC (the Southern Arizona Leadership Council) that controls public and private institutions in southern Arizona. Superintendent Pedicone rose through SALC’s ranks and was its vice-president.

Republican politicians have exploited the hatred of Mexicans, using it to their economic and political advantage. The same goes for the Koch Brothers, the Tea Party, the minutemen, and the prison and gun industries, not to mention the bankers who launder money made from selling arms to the Mexican cartels.

Politicos such as Attorney General Tom Horn and Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal have built their careers by spreading lies and bashing Mexicans. Tolerating them is like speaking respectfully of Hitler. ALEC and SALC leaders are criminals and child abusers. We should not abet their malfeasance by being respectful.

Some readers will say, “Rudy, you are going too far!” But am I going too far? Have they ever seen a 14 year old strung out on drugs, or a teenager that has a difficult time in explaining his or her thoughts? Who has created these conditions? Who is to blame?

I once told my wife when she was getting frustrated tutoring a second grader, “if Jorge does not learn to read, he will end up in jail.” She started to cry. Have you ever met a second grader who was bad?

Because of my early parochial education, I have a strong sense of right and wrong. For me, “sometimes there is no other side.” I have a mind, and as my teachers would tell me, “use it.” It is idiotic to say we are all equal in this country, it is a myth. In my vernacular, the word exploitation is the willful taking advantage of the poor. It is an abomination and cannot be tolerated

The wonderful quality about students is that many have retained the sense to be outraged at injustice. Reasoned moral outrage corrects the imperfections of society and achieves justice for all. And, that is precisely why the TUSD cabal is banning books. ALEC, SALC, the Tea Party and their gaggle can’t handle the truth, it is subversive.

William Shakespeare’s The Tempest was banned. Why? It is threatening because it talks about colonialism. It is about the Earls of Southampton, investors in the Virginia Company. At court they support a Protestant-expansionist foreign policy. King James opposes it because he does not want trouble with Spain. Eventually this leads James to executed Sir Walter Raleigh.

The Tempest is told through the eyes of Caliban, a native of a colonized island. It is about his accusations against the colonial governor, Prospero.

Prospero is the colonizer; Caliban, the colonized. Prospero looks at Caliban as being genetically inferior. The story betrays Prospero’s colonial mentality; he has little respect for the natives or the environment. His demeanor resembles that of Superintendent Pedicone and the white establishment of Tucson who regard Mexicans, whether born on this side or the other side of the border as aliens.

Rather than use history or literature to correct the imperfections of society, Huppenthal and the majority of the TUSD board chose to censor books. The Tucson cabal believes that it can hide the truth, and thus keep Mexicans in their place. It is similar to the efforts of many former confederate states to erase any mention of slavery as if it had never existed. According to them, African Americans were happy under slavery. It is similar to the efforts of neo-Nazis to deny the holocaust or the Turks’ denial of the Armenian genocide.

Their view is if people don’t know about it, it did not happen. Consequently, Mexicans can continue to drop out of school, go to prison, work at minimum wage jobs, and believe in fairy tales. If they learn, they may start counting.

By Rodolfo F. Acuña

Throughout the history of Mexican Americans, education has been considered the stairway to the middle-class. Education meant security and basics such as health insurance. This heaven meant better jobs and a small house or two for old age.

As with the European immigrant, the stairway was built in stages. Those with limited education could often get union jobs. After a generation or two in factories, Mexican Americans accumulated sufficient capital to keep their children in school, and a few sent them to college.

To build the stairway, workers and their families fought for compulsory education, they petitioned school boards, and led walkouts protesting de jure and de facto school segregation.

Mutalistas, el Congreso Mexicanista, Alianza Hispano-Americano, La Liga Protectora Latina, League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), led campaigns for better schools. George I. Sánchez was a giant in advocating for this stairway.

However, it was not the 1960s that Chicano youth forced major breakthroughs. The Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO) walkouts, the East LA School Walkouts, and small walkouts throughout the southwest and elsewhere had similar themes — better education, more college prep classes, more Mexican American teachers, and the teaching of Mexican American Studies.

As a result Mexican Americans went to college in greater numbers. In 1968 there were about 100 Latino PhDs – a decade later they were an identifiable mass. In the intervening years at Cal State Northridge the Latino student population exploded from about 50 in 1969 to some 11,000 today.

Despite the gains the Latino dropout rate remains at about 60 percent; most barrio schools still offer a limited number of college prep classes. A larger portion of Latino students are being recruited and admitted from parochial, magnet and schools on the fringes of the barrio. Few males are enrolling. In some universities the ratio of Latino female/male is 65/35.

Like the nation’s roads, the Mexican American stairway to the middle-class heaven has fallen into disrepair. There are potholes everywhere. Outreach and special programs have become expendable and are under attack. The excuse is the budget.

Many Latino students could only afford college through financial assistance. However, early on financial aid was diluted by expanding the eligibility for assistance while shrinking funding.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was the rising tuition. Without financial aid and loans, the bridge is beginning to tumble. At the California State Universities tuition will rise to $10,000 a year, which will put education out of the reach of students from barrio schools.

Putting this in perspective, I paid about $10 a year at Los Angeles State in the late 1950s; in 1969 fees amounted to about $50 a semester.

American corporations simply refuse to pay for the cost of social production. The baby boom generation that benefitted from free education, the GI Bill, low interest housing, low gas and food prices, selfishly do not want to pay for the education of the young.

Mexico graduates more engineering students than the United States. Among sixteen 16 First World nations, the United State ranks number 13th in affordability.

At the beginning of the last century, Mexican workers were excluded from unions and relied on self-help organizations. This became more difficult as the nation became highly urbanized.

The Americans consider themselves a generous people, and certain Americans are. However, this generosity does not extend to the poor. A few will give to the homeless on Christmas and feel somewhat less guilty, as long as it does not interfere with their Christmas meal. They give through organizations that qualify them for tax exemptions.

Historically Latinos have had a small middle-class. They are generous to family members. However, there is not a tradition of contributing to philanthropic organizations. Selected immigrant groups send money back to their communities, such as the Clubes Unidos Zacatecanos that remit billions of dollars annually to Zacatecas.

Latinos usually give through their churches. But, philanthropy is seen as foreign to most Latinos, especially Mexican Americans. They are concentrated in the working class. At the turn of this century, 25.8 percent of Mexican-born immigrants lived in poverty, over double the rate for natives.

According to one report, “[c]urrently, 53 percent of Latino households make charitable contributions to charities as opposed to 72 percent of all U.S. households.” It could be argued that comparisons are not fair. Poverty plays a role, as does the tax code where the middle-class get write offs. The reason Mexicans give for not contributing more is that they are not asked.

Let’s face it; we all owe our careers to the stairway. Without that stairway we would not have a middle-class to broker our gains in population into political and economic power. National Latino and Hispanic organizations cater to the middle class.

Keeping the stairway somewhat operable will be the greatest challenge for Latinos. Let us not be naïve and believe that everything will return to as it was in 1970 or 80. Tuition will continue to spiral. In California, fifty percent of the professors’ salaries and operational costs are derived from student tuition.

Surely administrators are blame for the inflation with university presidents earning in excess of $300,000 annually with perks. The bureaucracies in the university makes navigating them near impossible, and professor salaries at the top are near $100,000 annually and more.

I will not argue that professor salaries are not justified, just that they are part of the problem. I ask myself, would most teacher unions oppose plans to begin alternative institutions that did not include teacher contracts?

After long deliberation I have come to the conclusion that whether teacher unions or others like it or not, we have to find our own solutions. The maintenance of the stairway should be our first priority.

Presently Latino education is not very high on the priority list of progressives in this country. Perhaps they have seen too many movies on the Alamo.

I am under attack for a statement that I made in the early 1990s when educational access was again being limited. I said that we would not allow ourselves to be pushed into the intellectual ovens of ignorance and lack of opportunity. Education is a basic right, and we who are active with youth know the consequences of not being able to read.

The stairway represents the only hope for many.

In the near future we will be making a call for Latinos and others to come to a meeting to explore the possibility of starting a non-profit university that would keep the costs under $1,000 a year.

It is criminal how many for profit schools have sprung up in the past decade. Full-time students at for-profit schools paid an average of $30,900 annually in the 2007-2008 academic year. This was almost double the $15,600 average paid at public universities. The average cost of attending a private nonprofit college was $26,600.

If the government can allow such outlandish costs to be handed down to students then it can sanction real non-profit universities. The truth be told, universities and colleges have become as predatory as the loan sharks and Wall Street.

We will outline a plan which we will telecast throughout the nation in an effort to get retired teachers and professors to put together a non-profit institution. This is imperative because public education today is being privatized. Even at the California State Universities which were once called the “people’s college” there are for profit entities where students can get an alternative education – at a cost.