News & Updates

Support for AB 1460 

 

Governor Gavin Newsom 

1303 10th Street, Suite 1173 

Sacramento, CA 95814-1173 

 

Dear Governor Newsom, 

The Department of Women and Gender Studies at San Francisco State University is writing to reiterate its support of AB 1460. We first signaled our enthusiasm when signing the July 31, 2020 San Francisco State Unity Letter. 

 

We were dismayed. then, to find that the ASCSU named Women and Gender Studies as a department that was hostile to AB-1460. Women and Gender Studies was neither consulted nor made aware of this misrepresentation, though the Department, unlike the ASCSU, is in full operation this summer. We cannot account for such a divisive and inaccurate misrepresentation, which is against SFSU's principles of faculty representation, and our own historic values. Women and Gender Studies reserves both the right to its own voice as well as its deep commitment to collegial and integrated relations with the College of Ethnic Studies. 

Women and Gender Studies grew out of 1968-student initiatives, which embodied collective change for all. In the era of Black Lives Matter, Women and Gender Studies again stands with the College of Ethnic Studies and is honored to support their work by providing complementary not competitive educational opportunities. Women and Gender Studies believes that it serves all our students well to take a class in Ethnic Studies - this benefits our students' well-being and successful path to graduation, provides sorely-needed history and perspective, and promotes a sense of belonging and worth. AB-1460 will reduce ignorance, divisiveness, and alienation by providing a shared context for debate, understanding, and intellectual challenge. 

Women and Gender Studies benefits greatly from an integrated campus that serves all our students, and are grateful to the sense of historic belonging that our valued colleagues in Ethnic Studies are providing. We stand with them, for the sake of the excellence of all students, in supporting AB 1460. We urge you to support AB 1460 and thereby support the growth of an informed, engaged, and successful student body. 

Sincerely.