Robin Kelley, Professor of American History at UCLA, places the origins of UC San Diego's Ethnic Studies program within a broader context of anti-racist student protests in the 1990s and the proliferation of new Ethnic Studies around the US. Although this was the height of liberal multiculturalism, it was also the era of NAFTA, Proposition 187, prison expansion, and policies that accelerated class and racial inequality. This period also marks the defeat of the Rainbow Coalition and Left internationalist politics of the 1980s, and the triumph of Clinton-era neoliberalism. Kelley argues that what he's calling Second Wave Ethnic Studies emerged in response to this latest neoliberal turn as an effort at multiracial coalition building and rethinking the identity politics of the 1960s. The period is rich with lessons for our contemporary crisis. Presented by the Ethnic Studies Department at UC San Diego. (#30794)