Birth of Columbia's CSER, 1999

Sharing Views on the Present Challenges and Future Direction of CSER

Here is a brief summary of Directior Paredez's points: 

1. How have you and other faculty engaged with CSER over the years?

"We have faculty appointed in departments out of CSER for a 25%, 50% appointments who are hugely invested in our students and in social justice surrounding ethnicity and race."

2. What do you see as the strength of CSER?

"There has been a real infusion across both the creative arts and the social sciences, allowing the students to explore what they want in a range of directions."

3. What drives the creative, non-traditional ways of education at CSER?

"Embedded in the field of ethnic studies is a real questioning of epistemologies and pedagogy […] that values different modes of knowledge production."

4. What do you feel about the space CSER occupies institutionally? 

“So in some ways the particular [institutional] structures […] are inhibitive of the deep sense of engagement that often does exist. The structures don’t reflect the kind of work that often happens in the field. They forbid the fluid, disciplinary porous work that [CSER] has been doing.” 

“[CSER] focuses quite a lot in the particular case of [understanding of forces of race and ethnicity] that happens in the United States. And yet, we have the introduction to ethnic studies count as a global core class. … it is just evidence of the ways that people of color in the United States are often and frequently […] rendered outside of the borders of what counts as American.” 

5. Relationship with Ethnic Studies with the Core and existing disciplines at Columbia

"At its foundation is a questioning and re-evaluation and a reconfiguration of the systems of thought or the epistemologies that we’ve come to know - NOT what we call an additive model - oh, we’ll just add Toni Morrison and we’re covering it all; we’ll add or César Chávez and it’s okay." 

6. What are the challenges that CSER faces currently under its Center status? 

“The fact that CSER has 63 majors and concentrators - that is sizable for an institute or department."

“I feel like I don’t get to do enough for our students because in CSER […] so one of the biggest challenges is [living] on the kindness of strangers to rely upon other legitimated departments. Then we have to kind of pair with them and convince them that this would be mutually beneficial for them.”

“While there are many professors on campus who might easily fit as CSER professors, [because it is a lot for a professor to take on to be joint-appointed], they may have chosen - and absolutely understandably - to just be in one department. […] It often means asking a lot of professors of color who do end up doing the work for ethnic studies.” 

7. Concerns about the interdisciplinary, non-traditional nature of CSER being compromised by departmentalization

“Becoming an institute [at least] should be considered for CSER because it allows for greater resources and greater hiring power.” 

“Every single year, we run into the same issues with hiring. It’s because our majors and growing; we have  faculty that are completely overworked.”

“I do feel like something has to shift - [as precedented in] Women and Gender Studies or IRAAS.”

8. What do you want to tell the CSER community? 

“The thing that I find so inspiring with CSER as director of undergraduate studies is really seeing the remarkable work that our students do. [Out students] really are looking for a way to take agency and ownership over their education.”