[2] The first Chicano studies program was established at California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA) in Fall 1968 in response to demands articulated by student activism movements.
[8] The expanded admissions policy would, in effect, diversify the student body by guaranteeing placement at CUNY for all New York City high school graduates.
[7][10] Student activism related to the demand for Puerto Rican studies was not limited to CUNY, and effervesced across New York public campuses including Brooklyn, Lehman, Queens and Bronx Community Colleges.
"[13] He comments that "The academic foreignization directs literacy itself toward English and away from Spanish in a way that pushes many communities toward political and social obligations that shape not only literacy and graduation rates but also access to public funds, democratic participation, and the nature of belonging and citizenship.”[14] As Spanish and Spanish-language cultures are "externalized as 'foreign,' such cultures and languages are commonly conceptualized as non-generative, ungrammatical, impure, and/ or contaminated—and thus invalid vis-à- vis their equivalents in Spain.
While these local cultures have profound histories, traditions, aesthetics, narratives, and myths, the structures of the academy require (if these materials appear in pedagogy, which does not regularly occur) that they be studied, recognized, and institutionalized as minor and unimportant in comparison to Spain.”[15] While Latino studies is sometimes encompassed under the umbrella of ethnic studies, it is important to note that the discipline's course of development in different areas of the United States has been shaped by regional demographics, including the demographic composition of a college campus' student body.
In the case of Latino studies, the American northeast and southwest have served as especially salient battlegrounds for these debates to unfold.
"[17] (On January 17, 2017 Arizona House Education Committee Chairman Paul Boyer denied a hearing, effectively killing the bill.
[1] These debates arise from theoretical and epistemological inquiry but also from concerns surrounding funding and institutional support for university departments and academic programs.
In his 1999 essay "New Concepts, New Contexts," Juan Flores—an advocate for the freestanding autonomy of Latino studies departments—described the potential "dilution" or "distortion" of the field when subsumed into umbrella departments.
[20] Nonetheless, recognizing political and pragmatic concerns, Flores recommended that departmental status should be evaluated on a "case-by-case" basis in order to best place the discipline according to the needs and demands of a particular institutional environment.
[20] Pedro Cabán considered the tensions and contradictions between Latino studies as a discipline borne from student activism and institutional demands placed upon the discipline, writing: If deployed uncritically, the Latino label can result in sanitizing a history of political activism and critical engagement that is the legacy of the struggles of the 1960s ... if Latino studies programs are to be successful and relevant to legions of students, they will need to retain the normative values that defined their transformative goals, and obtain the academic authority that traditional disciplines possess (hiring, promotion and tenure, curriculum development, discretion over budgets, etc.)
[2] However, Pedro Cabán argues that the two schools of thought differed in one significant way: "Whereas the Chicano historiography and the emerging social science literature primarily explored the Chicano experience in the US, early Puerto Rican Studies was heavily invested in reinterpreting the economic history of Puerto Rico under US colonial domination.