On November 6, 1968, the Third World Liberation Front students at San Francisco State University and UC Berkeley staged the longest university strike by students in the United States, protesting a Eurocentric education and demanding reform. This protest would lead to the creation of the first ethnic studies programs in the country, devoted to studying interlocking systems of oppression plaguing Third World Peoples. The university has long been a crucial site for activism by students from marginalized backgrounds; the San Francisco protest is only one instance of student of color activism that catalyzed institutional transformation. These transformations do not occur in one fell swoop; rather, they represent gradual processes of reflection and change. “Global Influences, Local Actions: Student Activism at Yale”, curated by the students in “Comparative Ethnic Studies,” a junior seminar in the Ethnicity, Race, and Migration program at Yale College (Fall 2018) – and its associated online component – seeks to showcase the gradualism of such efforts by students at Yale.
“Global Influences, Local Actions: Student Activism at Yale,” represents the culmination of a semester spent critiquing global networks of power as they play out in the history of activism at Yale. This exhibit is an undertaking of intervention: it tells stories that are often left in the background of institutional memories. We consulted archives from Yale Manuscripts and Archives, the various cultural centers, student organizations and publications, and other entities to uncover the stories of student activism from the past 60 years. With testimonies, original documents, photographs, and newspaper clippings, our exhibit recounts how the labor of students of color and their allies led to tangible transformations in the landscape of Yale’s campus over time. Though we approach this project chronologically and organized the exhibit in decades, it is important to note that we do not view student activism as a set of discrete moments. Instead, the students’ work reflects a continuous dialogue with the conditions on campus and in the world. The work of student activists has always been collaborative and their causes multi-faceted, and we aim to reflect such multiplicity in this exhibit.
As you make your way through the exhibit, we ask that you keep in mind that the majority of the students involved in this project are able to engage with this work – and, indeed, with the ER&M program – and to exist at Yale more comfortably because of student activism. Our access to self-determination within this institution is thanks to previous generations of students’ activism. Their work allows us to claim space at Yale as scholars, students, and activists in our own right and through this exhibit. Space and time limit what we can research and display, and we acknowledge that this exhibit does not capture all important elements of the work of those who came before us. Nonetheless, we hope that what you encounter here will convey the transformative effect of student of color activists and their allies on Yale’s campus over the decades, and that our representation of these activists’ legacies will help to solidify their place in Yale’s history.