It’s official! Students can now major in Black and Latino Studies (BLS) at Baruch College.
The innovative degree track, housed at Weissman and chaired by Professor Shelly Eversley, adds five full-time, dedicated faculty members and breaks new ground by answering the call for a 21st century approach to race and ethnic studies — combining an explicitly anti-racist, interdisciplinary pedagogy with an emphasis on skills that will serve students no matter where they go from here.
According to Dr. Eversley, Baruch’s BLS degree will build upon ethnic studies’ perennial commitment to community engagement by making explicit connections between classroom learning and practical applications.
“All careers need problem solvers and critical thinkers” says Dr. Eversley, “BLS students will be able to think through challenges using multiple lenses for analysis. They’ll get experience working with the discourses of poetry, politics, history, and communication, just to name a few.”
While traditionally professional skills have been seen as separate from the kind of critical thinking engendered by a liberal arts education, Baruch’s BLS major is founded on the idea that interdisciplinary learning is the very bedrock of students’ future career ambitions. This more dialectical approach to course goals will prepare students for post-college life in both the public and private sectors, including education, human resources, public policy, journalism, the law, and economic development.
A unique component of the 30-credit degree program is a substantial fieldwork requirement. Students will receive course credit for their work with New York City-based and national organizations dedicated to advancing racial and social justice, gaining the operational and leadership skills they’ll build upon for the rest of their lives
At Baruch since 1970, the BLS program was originally born out of student activism calling for open education and more diverse representation in the student body, as colleges and universities across the country launched Black Studies departments for the first time. At that time, Baruch had one of the only combined Black and Latino Studies departments in the country, as other institutions established programs that treated these as separate fields.
Building on this tradition of inclusion, the department centers the study of race, racism, and power while continuing to question categories of gender, sexuality, and class. This explicitly intersectional approach together with its cross-disciplinary scope, has always been a hallmark of Black and Latino Studies. Its introduction as a proper major at last, promises to offer new life to Baruch’s course offerings and make BLS’ commitment to the liberatory potential of critical race studies more central to CUNY’s mission.
