TWLF Academic & Research Network

About

This page contains a map and information of UC Berkeley's TWLF Academic & Research Network.

The American Cultures Center

During the 1980s, the enrollment of students of color increased at UC Berkeley. By 1981, the idea of an Ethnic Studies Requirement for the entire campus had grown from the momentum developed after the creation of the Department of Ethnic Studies. However, it wasn’t until 1986, that the idea of a campus-requirement embodying an Ethnic Studies curriculum drew campus attention. Students protested UC’s investment of pensions in South African apartheid businesses, and after the success of the Boycott, Divest & Sanctions (BDS) movement, graduate and undergraduate students turned their deep political education and mobilizing skills to “desegregating” the curriculum.¹

In 1987, a Special Committee on Education and Ethnicity was formed consisting of faculty and undergraduate students. Instead of the initial demand for an Ethnic Studies campus-wide requirement, the committee proposed the American Cultures (AC) campus-wide requirement, aiming to incorporate multiple and comparative racial-ethnic and cultural experiences into courses across all UC Berkeley disciplines. In what many said was the highest number of attendees meeting of Academic Senate faculty since the Vietnam War, the Academic Senate narrowly passed the proposal (227-194) on April 25, 1989.²

Today, AC courses are the campus’s signature undergraduate curriculum, offered in over fifty departments and enrolling over 13,000 students yearly. AC courses have, in the words of Ling-chi Wang, emeritus professor of Asian American Studies, “challenged each discipline to raise questions that they had never raised before, and in the process, they have uncovered unknown aspects of their own disciplines. AC is one of the most important curriculum-reform projects in the history of this campus.” AC courses continue to embody TWLF’s community-based vision of higher education by offering American Cultures Engaged Scholarship (ACES) courses, designed to partner with local community-based organizations developing research questions and projects that address some of the nation's most pressing social issues. Learn More

The Centers for Educational Justice & Community Engagement

The Centers for Educational Justice & Community Engagement (EJCE) is a collaborative of seven offices and centers that advocate for, build capacity with, and dialogue among and across diverse communities. The various centers and offices that comprise EJCE include the African American Student Development; Asian Pacific American Student Development; Chicanx Latinx Student Resource Center; Gender Equity Resource Center; Multicultural Community Center; and the Native American Student Development

The Center for Race and Gender

The Center for Race and Gender (CRG) at UC Berkeley, similar to the Multicultural Community Center, was established in response to the demands of the 1999 twLF strike. Following a successful hunger strike, UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl appointed a founding committee, including three faculty members and three twLF student strikers to outline the creation of CRG. Today, CRG “enables faculty, researchers, students, organizers, and artists to research and collaborate on vital issues locally and globally through developing rigorous, creative, and community-engaged intellectual projects.”³ It advances innovative scholarship through research initiatives, publications, a multimedia platform, symposia, and other events. This distinct focus complements TWLF's initiatives spurred by the same activist spirit that gave rise to the MCC, highlighting the varied but interconnected paths of progress initiated by the 1999 twLF strike. Learn more

The Department of Ethnic Studies

The Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) Strikes of 1968 and 1969 played an essential role in the establishment of Ethnic Studies through its activism and advocacy. During these strikes, students demanded academic curricula that reflect the histories, identities, and contributions of African Americans, Asian Americans, Chicano and Latino Americans, and Native Americans. Students challenged the university’s dominant Eurocentric education, which lacked a relevant education for students of color.

In response to these strikes, which were among the longest and most violent in the history of the U.S., the UC Berkeley administration agreed to establish the first Ethnic Studies department in the nation to confer degrees in African American Studies, Asian American Studies, Chicano Studies, and Native American Studies. Ethnic Studies has since served as an entry point for students to engage with decolonial thinkers and to see themselves and their histories reflected in academic curricula.⁴ This discipline, born out of a “pedagogy of liberation, is the legacy of the radical Third World Liberation Front.”⁵ Students committed to the radical, community-centered mission of Ethnic Studies have continued to strengthen this vision.⁶

The legacy of the TWLF lives on in those who gain a critical consciousness doing this work, and use this knowledge to transform their communities. Learn more

The Ethnic Studies Library

The Ethnic Studies Library is the departmental library of the Department of Ethnic Studies. It was established in 1997 by merging the Asian American Studies Library, the Chicano Studies Library, and the Native American Studies Library. Since the founding of the Department in 1969, the collections of these libraries grew from student interest in collecting and preserving a perspective by and for racialized communities that they saw as lacking or marginalized in other campus libraries. The specialized ethnic studies books and serials, archival collections, posters, and audio collections from those three libraries live in a centralized space on the ground floor of Stephens Hall, a short walk from the Social Sciences Building. The library consists of four collections: Asian American Studies Collection; Chicano Studies Collection; Native American Studies Collection; and Comparative Ethnic Studies Collection.⁷ Learn More

The Multicultural Community Center

The Multicultural Community Center (MCC) at UC Berkeley exists today as a part of TWLF’s enduring legacy. Established in the aftermath of the 1999 twLF Strike, which echoed the demands and spirit of the 1969 TWLF strike, the MCC was born out of student-led activism aiming to counteract cuts to UC Berkeley’s Department of Ethnic Studies. Since its inception, the MCC has been deeply rooted in the principles of TWLF, embracing a student-led vision that has been shaped by a “dynamic history of struggle” striving to expand its impact and nurture a community dedicated to justice, community empowerment, and self-determination.⁸ The MCC serves as a community space for student and community engagement offering a wide range of programs, events, and community resources. As it looks to the future, the MCC is committed to ensuring the legacy of TWLF remains a living and evolving at UC Berkeley. Learn more

The Berkeley Revolution

Berkeley Revolution (BR) is a collective website project that emerged originally from an honors undergraduate seminar in American Studies at UC Berkeley — “The Bay Area in the Seventies,” taught by Scott Saul in the spring of 2017. The eleven students in that seminar shaped their own research projects, burrowing into archives official and unofficial so as to recover the stories missing from or hidden within standard accounts of Berkeley’s history. The seminar was then repeated in the spring of 2018 with nine more students. In the spring of 2020 the course was expanded...Read more or visit BR's TWLF page.

The Third World Liberation Front Research Initiative (cross-campus collaboration)

In anticipation of the fiftieth anniversary of the 1969 Third World Liberation Front Strike at UC Berkeley, various campus units and individuals from the 1969 and 1999 TWLF strike gathered to help plan a series of commemorative events from October 2018 to April 2019. These units included the American Cultures Center, Center for Race and Gender, Department of Ethnic Studies, Ethnic Studies Library, Multicultural Community Center, and Native American Student Development. These events led to the development and identification of many critical resources. In addition, the recounting of stories from the 1969 strike highlighted the need for a dedicated TWLF website to capture oral histories and showcase these resources.

This realization sparked discussions about creating a long-needed TWLF site to centralize these resources, and to acknowledge the campus units that emerged from and continue to support the original vision of the TWLF strike. As a result, the TWLF Research Initiative was formed to develop the site, carry out the TWLF 50th Anniversary Oral History Project, and organize its content.

The Initiative was led by undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, staff, and librarians from the same units involved in planning the TWLF 50th anniversary events. These groups, which owe their existence to TWLF’s efforts, also collaborated with and received support from various individuals and groups within and outside the campus, who are acknowledged in our Recognition and Gratitude blurb.

For these reasons, the initial focus of the site is the 1969 TWLF Strike at UC Berkeley. However, the TWLF Research Initiative plans to expand content to include other TWLF movements in the future. For questions or to collaborate with us, please email twlfresearch@berkeley.edu or submit feedback and recommendations using our submission form

Third World Strike at The University of California, Berkeley collection, 1968-1972

A physical and partially digitized collection of materials related to the Third World Strike at The University of California, Berkeley. The physical collection is a comprehensive array of documents and materials, including a detailed chronology of the strike, demands, communiqués, responses from campus administration and groups, updates, committee details, and negotiation records. The collection also contains press releases, event announcements, newspaper articles, photographs, and commemorative items, among other materials.

Footnotes

¹David Yamane, “The Long March to American Cultures at UC Berkeley.” In Student Movements for Multiculturalism: Challenging the Curricular Color Line in Higher Education, 47-56. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002).

²David Yamane, “Long March,” 75.

³Center for Race and Gender, “About | Center for Race and Gender,” crg.berkeley.edu, accessed March 25, 2024, https://crg.berkeley.edu/about

⁴Maria Ramirez and Nina Genera, “Ethnic Studies Historical Legacy,” in Power of the People Won’t Stop: Legacy of the TWLF at UC Berkeley (Berkeley, CA: East Wind Books of Berkeley, 2020), 191.

⁵Ziza Delgado, “Embracing the Politics of Education: Celebrating 50 Years of Ethnic Studies as a Praxis of Liberation by Ziza Delgado,” in Power of the People Won’t Stop: Legacy of the TWLF at UC Berkeley (Berkeley: East Wind Books of Berkeley, 2020), 171.

⁶Ziza Delgado, “Embracing the Politics of Education: Celebrating 50 Years of Ethnic Studies as a Praxis of Liberation by Ziza Delgado,” in Power of the People Won’t Stop: Legacy of the TWLF at UC Berkeley (Berkeley: East Wind Books of Berkeley, 2020), 165.

4 UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies Library. “About the Ethnic Studies Library | Ethnic Studies Library.” eslibrary.berkeley.edu. Accessed April 3, 2024. https://eslibrary.berkeley.edu/about-the-ethnic-studies-library.

⁵Multicultural Community Center, “MCC | Centers for Educational Justice & Community Engagement,” cejce.berkeley.edu, accessed March 22, 2024,https://cejce.berkeley.edu/mcc