When Harvard students organizing for ethnic studies watched a documentary showing University of California students risking arrest to gain an ethnic studies department, they saw protest scenes far removed from their own.

The images on screen showed hundreds of students chanting “ethnic studies now!” and forming a human chain to stop police from arresting their peers.

The ethnic studies movement at Harvard has followed a less confrontational trajectory.

New groups advocating for Latino-American and Asian-American studies, as well as a pre-existing group demanding a general ethnic studies curriculum, have spent the year struggling with both the administration and each other to balance the desire for unity with the specific goals of their own ethnic groups.

Students say the atmosphere of negotiation and lobbying has made groups more hesitant to risk individual gains and take broader action.

But the perceived response toward the study of ethnicity by the administration, especially that of University President Lawrence H. Summers, may bring the students closer together than has happened yet.

Birthing Pains

The most recent movement for ethnic studies—although Harvard students have been lobbying for ethnic studies on and off since the 1960s—was born last year in the Academic Affairs Committee of the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations.

And after attending a conference at Columbia University on ethnic studies this winter, a broad base of support coalesced in favor of the cause. Conference attendees included members of the Black Students Association (BSA), RAZA and Fuerza Latina.

But the coalition, which met regularly from late January to last month, faced a bumpy ride.

Soon after the coalition’s formation, members of RAZA, Concilio Latino and Fuerza Latina threatened to withdraw from a rally partly intended to highlight the broad base of support for ethnic studies. They were angered by a letter coalition member Ethan Y. Yeh ’02 wrote to University administrators, saying the message overlooked their goals.

“Some students wanted individual departments and felt that an ethnic studies certificate would undermine that,” says Judith Vasquez ’03, a board member of Latinas Unidas. “People’s visions were very different.”

The conflict was soon ironed over, but what occurred was emblematic of an unresolved question underlying the movement—whether or not the broad focus on ethnic studies occurs at the expense of individual groups.

The answer is one few are willing to gamble on.