Ethnic Studies for the People

Giving our communities the knowledge the powerful want to ban

While teaching at major universities on both the East and West coasts for nearly two decades on topics like race and anti-racism, empire and anti-imperialism, neoliberal globalization and transnational activism among others, I could already see how the kinds of knowledge I was sharing was being systematically undermined. 

Within higher education, university administrators and other major funders either failed to invest in or were actively divesting from Ethnic Studies and other interdisciplinary fields born out of social and ecological justice movements. Sometimes I and my colleagues even faced intimidation tactics by right-wing students in our classrooms and colleagues we passed in the hallways for the kinds of things we teach and write about as scholars. 

Meanwhile, outside of academia, I was alarmed by the growing campaigns against critical race theory (CRT)--a framework used by many Ethnic Studies faculty--by right-wing parents and elected officials that began in earnest under the first Trump administration and continued under the Biden administration. I couldn't believe that books were being banned at the K-12 level and in public libraries.

By 2021, I decided to retire early from my university job to start SLE so that the communities I care about can get the transformative knowledge we deserve.

I'm not surprised by the January 2025 executive order of the second Trump administration to end "radical indoctrination"  - which ultimately attempts to ban Ethnic Studies, an interdisciplinary field of study that invites students to be critical of  structures of power and domination like white supremacy, racial capitalism, heteropatriarchy and the like. 

These are scary times. But we do not need to be afraid. There are many of us who can and will preserve the histories of our communities that the current administration will try to erase. The powerful want to eliminate our histories so we don't know about the incredible ways our ancestors and people like us have resisted, fought back and created alternatives. "No history, no self." At SLE, however, we provide our communities with the tools to "know history, know self." 

At a time when our public educational institutions are crumbling and when social media algorithms circulate lots of information but not necessarily knowledge, I invite you to take advantage of the resources offered at SLE. 

-Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez, Founder



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