CSER | Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race

Statement from the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race’s Faculty - April 25, 2024

The Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race (CSER) faculty fully supports Columbia and Barnard students’ rights to free speech and assembly. We unequivocally and unanimously condemn the decision to bring armed riot police onto campus and to impose mass suspensions in response to peaceful student protests.

We urgently advocate for the immediate reinstatement of the Columbia and Barnard students, including restoring their access to academic and extracurricular activities, dining halls, and residences. The university leadership must also swiftly revoke the suspensions and expunge disciplinary sanctions from student records. Additionally, for the safety of everyone on campus, the administration must cease its collaboration with the FBI and the NYPD, end its deployment of private security firms to surveil students and faculty, and begin a dialogue taking students’ demands seriously.

The Center is the only academic unit at Columbia formed in response to student inquiry and activism. The students currently calling for a ceasefire and university divestment carry on that legacy. We demand a university that can sustain real dialogue, without policing, on state violence towards Palestine. The University should be able to engage peacefully with peaceful student protest.

Spring 2024 CSER Research Symposium

Congrats to CSER’s Senior Honor students on presenting on their ongoing research this past Friday, April 5th at the 16th Annual Senior Research Symposium.

Click here for the zoom link to view the presentations!

Chinatown Book Launch Party: Corky Lee's Asian America

Join us for the groundbreaking book launch of “Corky Lee’s Asian America.” In honor of 2024 AAPI Heritage Month, “Corky Lee’s Asian America” offers a profound reflection on Asian American history and activism. Featuring never-before-seen photographs alongside Corky’s most renowned images, the book encapsulates his lifelong commitment to documenting moments of inclusion, resistance, and ethnic pride.

Saturday, May 4 2024

4 – 6 PM

Manny Cantor Center: 197 East Broadway, New York, NY

Elsa Stamatopoulou wins Lifetime Achievement Award, by the New York City Bar Association

On March 8th, 2024, International Women’s Day, Professor Elsa Stamatopoulou, Director of ISHR’s Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Program, was granted a Lifetime Achievement Award by the New York City Bar Association, on the occasion of the 5th International Law Conference on the Status of Women.

The award, established in 2020, recognizes women and women-centric organizations focusing on justice work. The International Law Conference dealt with the current status of women and highlights the role of judges, lawyers, human rights experts and policy advocates working to improve the status of women and girls by enforcing their legal rights through accountability and improving their economic opportunities to support themselves and their families.

Before joining Columbia University in 2011, Elsa spent 23 years working on human rights issues at the United Nations, in addition to seven years as the first Chief of the Secretariat of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues starting in 2003.

Karl Jacoby Receives 2024 Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award

Karl Jacoby, Allan Nevins Professor of American History – Department of History, was named as a recipient of the 2024 Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award for his deep commitment to teaching and mentoring, his curricular advancements in areas such as the history of the borderlands, Indigenous peoples, ethnicity and racialization, and the environment, and his role in strengthening the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race as its co-director.

Marie Myung-Ok Lee Published in New York Times and Bomb Magazine

Writer in Residence at CSER, Marie Myung-Ok Lee, was recently published in both the New York Times and Bomb Magazine.

Dr. Sandler Published in The Baffler

Matt Sandler, Program Director for MA in American Studies, published an essay in The Baffler about the novelist, screenwriter, critic, and folklorist Cecil Brown. “Stand Up and Spout” focuses on his hard-fought and quixotic attempt to revive, using artificial intelligence technology, the enslaved poet George Moses Horton.

Follow CSER's New Instagram Account!

Follow The Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race on our new Instagram page @columbiascser2023 to learn about upcoming events within our Center and other events in related Departments!

Join us for CSER's SAB Student Lounge!

Come hang out with fellow CSER students and catch up on work every Monday!

All are welcome – drinks and snacks are provided!

Time/Location: 12-2 PM at Hamilton 420

The Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race (CSER) is Columbia’s main interdisciplinary space for the study of ethnicity, race and indigeneity and their implications for thinking about culture, power, hierarchy, social identities, and political communities, in the U.S. and around the world.

Learn More