False Generosity, Joint Appointments, and the UCSB Chicanx Studies Department

Ethnic Studies departments, like the University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of Chicana/o Studies, emerged from social movements in the 1960s and 1970s. All faculty in this specific department had joint appointments, as the unit’s first chair wrote about in an article published in the journal in 1979. Now, some 45 years later, a more recent former department chair reflects on that earlier history with a more critical lens, using Paulo Freire’s concept of false generosity while also noting the ongoing dilemmas that Ethnic Studies departments continually face within academia.