by Anonymous
Penn puts on a progressive facade by boasting about its supposed diversity both in its student body and academics. To the incoming freshman, this gives the impression that they are entering a university that is welcoming to people of all backgrounds. When you’re at an institution with immense money and power, one would expect that every program and department would be given ample support. However, the reality is much more disappointing, with many programs going underfunded. In particular, Penn has a history of leaving its cultural and ethnic studies departments and programs behind and only giving them more support in moments when it can serve as a boost to its own image.
Asian American Studies
The Asian American Studies program was born out of student resistance and dissent. It was first proposed in the 90s by student protestors from the Asian American Student Alliance (later inspiring the emergence of the Asian Pacific Student Coalition) and faculty. They all had a single goal: demand for a program that recognizes, engages, and sustains Asian American and diaspora voices.
However, with only about 20 years later in 2017, there was already threat of its disappearance. With the previous Director, Grace Kao, leaving, Penn’s refusal in prioritizing to find a new director, the lack of a physical space for the program, and the limited funding received by the university all contributed to the almost loss of the ASAM at Penn.
Then in March 2021 the university finally decided to ensure three standing ASAM faculty positions. But, as explained by students from the ASAM Undergraduate Advisory Board to 34th Street, this step was only taken following increased anti-Asian violence, despite the fact that students had been advocating for these changes for years.
With ASAM celebrating its 25th anniversary last year, there is hope for growth and expansion of the program, including possibly turning the minor into a major and hiring more professors. However, honoring ASAM’s successes cannot be done without also acknowledging its turbulent history. ASAM has only been kept alive and going with the sustained efforts of student protestors, faculty dissent, and ongoing push from communities of color, collective of diasporas, and immigrants.
Penn’s Middle East Center
This past school year, the Penn Middle East Center was also on the verge of dissolution. In September 2022, the center lost all federal funding. The MEC was one of the several federally recognized national resource centers at Penn, but due to a lack of steady support from the university, the center has lost Title VI funding from the government.The MEC employed many faculty and staff that supports the center and helps oversee the Modern Middle Eastern Studies major and minor at Penn. However, this loss of federal funding has left the center, the faculty, and students in a state of uncertainty about what is to come next. The loss of funding additionally jeopardizes student scholarships.Therefore, Penn’s lack of institutional support is another hit against first-generation, low-income students who are already vulnerable.
The wider Philly public has also been affected by this change, as the MEC has been a vital community resource as the city’s only center for the study of the Middle East. The center has provided free lectures for K-12 students, workshops for teachers, and has participated in and hosted various film festivals, conferences, and academic symposiums for the public.
In October 2022, Penn decided to create a funding plan to fund the center for four and a half years after students called upon the University to take action.At the first University Council meeting of the 2022-23 school year, students from the Muslim Student Association (MSA), Penn Arab Student Society, Latinx Coalition, and more all came out in support and called Penn to fully fund the MEC. But Penn’s promise to support the MEC for the next few years does not end the fight. It brings the question, what comes after those 4 and a half years? With Penn refusing to make the MEC a permanent fixture at the University, the center, like other cultural centers and programs, remains in a state of uncertainty.
African and Africana Studies
Several years ago, Penn was home to the Africa Center, which focused on supporting the study of Africa in a historical and contemporary context. It was a physical space students could go to for resources on course offerings, research opportunities, and outreach initiatives with African communities in Philadelphia and beyond.
In the spring of 2015, Penn announced that it would be closing the Africa Center that summer. Additionally, the African Studies Program would be absorbed into the Department of Africana Studies. This prompted backlash and protests from faculty and students, who feared that this change would affect those interested in courses, majors, and minors in African studies. To appease those upset by these changes, the university promised that the department changes wouldn’t affect African Studies. However, in the following year they passed a measure to eliminate the independent major and minor in African studies and replace it with a concentration under the Africana studies major.
The marginalization of African Studies reflects the university’s deep misunderstanding of the differences between African and Africana Studies. To someone with little knowledge of either discipline, combining the two studies ostensibly makes sense based on their names. In actuality, the subject and purpose of each discipline differ a lot. African Studies focuses on the African continent, including its people, languages, and culture. Africana Studies, on the other hand, covers the African diaspora, which is the dispersion of African and African descendants outside of the African continent and the communities that resulted from this movement, and often focuses on African American culture. For Black and African students at Penn, having African studies as a separate major and program apart from Africana studies allows them to concentrate their studies on Africa and learn about the continent outside of a colonial context.
Native American and Indigenous Studies
Unlike other cultural studies programs that began in the early 2000s, Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) didn’t commence until 2014, when the NAIS minor was first approved. The minor was only possible due to the initiative of the first Native American faculty member hired in the Anthropology department, Dr. Margaret Bruchac. However, from its onset, the program has struggled to get proper support from Penn administration. A lack of tenure opportunities (as of 2022, Dr. Bruchac is the only tenured NAIS faculty) and a series of retirements has caused a program that first began as 13 faculty members across 14 departments to dwindle to just 7 standing professors across 4 departments in the College, and only 1 in Nursing. This problem is compounded by the fact that Penn is slow to hire new faculty dedicated to the NAIS program after existing professors move on. Moreover, Dr. Bruchac, the minor coordinator and professor of many of the NAIS courses, is now on leave of absence, leaving students without an experienced point of contact for the minor.
Indigenous students at Penn still lack a dedicated cultural house, which means that the NAIS program has even less institutional support than other cultural and ethnic studies programs. For now, the student club Natives at Penn (NAP) is the primary resource indigenous students use to support each other. For many students, college is the first time they are taking courses in Native American and Indigenous studies; making the NAIS program’s supportive resources hard to access turns a potentially daunting experience into a nightmare.
Collective Fight
The struggles among all the cultural studies at Penn are part of the institution’s deliberate acts of carelessness and neglect. One common root of many of the problems faced by cultural studies programs is the fact that they are designated as programs rather than departments. This simple title change prevents the program from hiring its own faculty and leads to less administrative support and funding. The ability for a discipline to hire its own staff is important as it ensures that there are long-term professors specifically dedicated to teaching ethnic studies Many of the faculty teaching ethnic studies at Penn do so part-time and juggle it with teaching other courses. These other courses are prioritized over ethnic studies, as they are part of larger programs and departments that get more attention from the administration, and as a result, cultural studies courses are taught much more infrequently than other courses (i.e. not every semester or sometimes not every academic year). Moreover, the cultural studies disciplines that do get more support tend to be the area studies, which are more focused on economics and Cold War-era history and employ a Western perspective (often utilizing orientalist, Western hegemonic frameworks). On the other hand,ethnic studies cover minorities in and beyond America and discuss cultural and ethnic history across a broader time period. These area studies, such as… also often get the department designation that cultural and ethnic studies don’t.
Penn’s selective support and funding showcase the institution’s biases. It demonstrates Penn’s refusal to act unless they can capitalize on student outrage. The fight for the preservation and support of cultural studies at Penn is a fight to keep this institution accountable to its mission, a battle to validate the stories Penn chooses to neglect, and a fight for a community we, as Penn students, want to be proud of.
Resources
Cultural/ethnic studies departments at Penn as of 2023:
- Africana Studies
- East Asian Languages & Civilizations
- Francophone, Italian, and Germanic Studies
- Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations
- Russian and East European Studies
- South Asia Studies
- Spanish and Portuguese
Cultural/ethnic studies programs at Penn as of 2023:
Penn Disorientation Guide 
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