“Unfinished Business: Ethnic Studies reflects on how the Free Speech Movement informed its creation”
December 13, 2024
Professors Keith Feldman and Harvey Dong sat down with Berkeley News to discuss the connections between the Free Speech Movement, the Third World Liberation Front, and the unfinished business of Ethnic Studies today. The article was featured on Berkeley News and the Berkeley Blog as part of a series on the legacies of the Free Speech Movement today.
“The TWLF and FSM challenged the very structure of the university, advocating for academic spaces to address the histories and realities of racism and colonialism at home and abroad,” Ethnic Studies Department Chair Keith Feldman said. “Their struggles laid the groundwork for generations of students and faculty committed to knowledge production in the service of building a better, more vital world for all.”
As UC Berkeley celebrates the 60th-anniversary celebration of the Free Speech Movement, both Dong and Feldman hope students and the public will recognize the importance of keeping these histories alive.
“We are currently at a similar impasse facing war, racism, institutional decay, which is calling for new generations of students to look back at the lessons of the past to build upon and apply the lessons from the past to the present,” Dong said.
For the full article, see: https://ls.berkeley.edu/news/