Ethnic Studies as Praxis

Abstract

The authors provide a collective counter-narrative of the movement at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) to resist educational policies that have negative implications for students, particularly students of color, and threaten Ethnic Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, and Queer Studies. The authors contextualize the movement that erupted in the fall of 2017 at CSUN within the struggles of the 1960s to transform higher education by establishing Ethnic Studies. Drawing from Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy and Critical Race Theory in education, the authors maintain that, in its best iterations, Ethnic Studies is praxis that empowers communities to create transformative social change.