By contrast, Berkeley currently has more than 100 courses outside the university's ethnic studies program which meet the American cultures requirement.

In response to the perceived lack of ethnic studies programming at the College, the AAC and ESAC are working together to plan an ethnic studies conference on November 11. Speakers will include Wang and Hu-deHart. The student groups also plan to invite administrators and the members of the Committee on Ethnic Studies.

"We want to open up a dialogue with faculty and open up a dialogue with students," says Jennifer Ching '96, president of ESAC. "We want to give faculty and administrators a chance to talk to the scholars."

Despite students' efforts, some Harvard faculty members still say they believe that ethnic studies is not a viable and established academic field.

"It is an interdisciplinary field of interest, not a coherent discipline. It has no methodology," says Winthrop Professor of History Stephen A. Thernstrom, a member of the Committee on Ethnic Studies. "If a body of scholarship emerged that made it seem there really is a discipline here [then a separate program might be appropriate], but I don't see it at present."

Rather than creating a separate ethnic studies program, Harvard administrators seem committed to maintaining the current interdisciplinary approach to ethnic studies, incorporating the study of race and ethnicity in the United States into existing departments.

Assistant Professor of Government Michael Jones-Correa says he thinks Harvard is already adequately addressing ethnic studies in the curriculum.

"It's not the case that ethnic studies is being ignored by professors....If you look at courses being offered in government, sociology and anthropology, you'll find in each of those departments some courses that deal with and address issues of ethnicity, race and multi-culturalism," he says. "It's very clearly the case that Harvard is not being negligent."

But Wang says such an approach to ethnic studies is not adequate.

"I think that if the integrationist approach has been successful, there would be no need for ethnic studies. But ethnic studies came into being precisely because of the failure of the integrationist approach," he says.

Hu-deHart argues that it is ridiculous for Harvard to resist creating an ethnic studies program when it has a nearly 30-year-old program in Afro-American studies, which she considers to be a sub-field of ethnic studies.

"From the outside we see these big names [in Afro-American studies], absolutely well-known people and outstanding scholars," Hu-deHart says. "But the deans and Professor Dominguez are still arguing. 'Is ethnic studies a discipline? Is it for real?"'

"You must have already acknowledged that if there's a department of Afro-American studies," she says. "[The other ethnic studies programs] are all patterned after Afro-American studies."

Isolating Afro-Am

But Harvard administrators are careful to distinguish between Afro-Am and other areas of ethnic studies.