Resisting Erasure

Host Dr. Tanya J. Gaxiola Serrano launches Resisting Erasure with a foundational conversation on Critical Race Counterstories : what they are, where they come from, how they function as method and methodology, and where they’re headed. Guests Dr. Daniel G. Solórzano (UCLA) and Dr. Aja Y. Martinez (UIUC) trace counterstory’s intellectual genealogy from law and ethnic studies to education, share fam...

In this episode we expose the ways settler colonialism, manifest destiny, and eugenics shaped the displacement and genocide of Indigenous people and influenced the development of California’s first public university. We felt it was important to contemplate these foundational events in California history, in order to properly understand the historical and political contexts from which higher educat...

In this episode, we speak to how racist politicians hijacked emergent science and then used that information to back social programs aimed at using a person’s genetics against them through eugenics. Specifically, we will discuss how eugenics was not only accepted, but how this movement shaped laws and education policy in California. Hosts: Ryan Henderson, Christian Johnson , and Hector Solorzano

In this episode, we will discuss key contradictions in California community college’s history, during the periods of 1920 through 1955. Starting with a focus on the countercyclical relationship between The Great Depression in the 1930’s and the boost on enrollment this period generated for junior colleges across the United States, we will argue that the main stock story of this period is told thro...

In this episode, we discuss how student-led resistance in the 1960s, particularly within the often overlooked context of community colleges, challenged and redefined the landscape of higher education in California. We provide context by examining the policies that claimed to democratize education but actually reinforced exclusion. By examining the activism of students at San Diego City College in...

This episode features podcasters Nellie Herrera-Martinez, Diana Vera-Alba , and Ildi Carrillo as they unpack the long, complicated history of affirmative action through story, data, and lived experience. Beginning with the Civil Rights Act, Executive Order 11246 , and the early foundations of educational equity, we explore how affirmative action sought to repair generations of exclusion rather tha...