In an August letter to the AAC, Knowles and Dominguez wrote, "Our faculty do not favor limiting the study of ethnicity to a handful of groups whose own self-definition has been changing over time and will no doubt continue to do so. Nor is there a good reason to limit, or to privilege, the study of some ethnic groups at the expense of others."

Dominguez says that Harvard's Afro-American studies program is not an example of limited ethnic studies, because the department is based on a racial, rather than an ethnic, category.

"It was very carefully chosen wording," he says. "[In the letter] we're talking about ethnicity. Ethnicity is much more malleable than race."

Jones-Correa says that it would perhaps have been better to establish an inclusive ethnic studies program, rather than an Afro-American studies program, 25 years ago, as Berkeley did. But he also says it is possible to make a distinction between Afro-American studies and other areas of ethnic studies.

"It is a very distinct history. [African-Americans are] not quite like other ethnic groups or immigrant groups," Jones-Correa says. "I don't think that having Afro-Am here means that every group should advocate its own separate program."

Thernstrom, though, says he's not sure even Afro-American studies is worthy of an independent department.

"My own view is that I feel that Afro-American studies could really be dealt with adequately without a department, that an interdisciplinary committee would be perfectly serviceable and appropriate," he says.

Model Programs

Berkeley's ethnic studies department, with its five undergraduate programs, is 26 years old. It began in 1969 after a 10-week student strike nearly paralyzed the university, Wang says.

"The faculty agreed reluctantly to establish a department of ethnic studies," Wang says. "Over the last 26 years, it has not been easy for [ethnic studies faculty]. We have been treated as the intellectual fringe."

Nevertheless, nearly every Asian American student at Berkeley will elect to take at least one course in Asian American studies during their undergraduate careers, he says.

"We are turning students away by the hundreds," he adds.

And just last week, the University of Colorado at Boulder approved the creation of an ethnic studies department. Until now, students have been able to major in ethnic studies, with a concentration in "Afro-American studies, American Indian studies, Asian American studies or Chicano/Latino studies."

In the last two years, Stanford, Brown and Princeton have all made commitments to ethnic studies. After a student hunger strike in 1994, Stanford now has committees working on the creation of three programs: Asian American studies, Chicano studies and the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity. Asian American and Chicano studies programs will be voted on during this academic year.

"I think it's very forward looking," says Stanford's Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano. "We very consciously chose to go [toward] this comparative framework. We just need to work comparatively and globally."