UC Santa Cruz closes Women’s Studies Department for their 50th Anniversary
By Anna-Katharina Priesterath, News Editor
On 25 November 2024, UC Santa Cruz posted their announcement about the closure of their Feminist Studies Department to ‘open new ways for feminist scholarship’ (source: UC Santa Cruz). The closing date for the department is July 1st, 2025. The Feminist Studies Department of the University of California Santa Cruz has been the meeting point for some of the most prominently discussed feminist scholars and researchers since 1974. Whether they have studied at the department themselves, taught classes, or conducted research, academics such as Bettina Aptheker, Angela Davis, Donna J. Haraway, Gloria E. Anzaldúa, and more brought international attention to the oldest feminist studies department in the U.S. UCSC has had a remarkable history of feminist activism and scholarship. Frankly, a majority of the written work that is currently discussed in the Women’s Studies program here at UCC has been written by scholars associated with UC Santa Cruz.
The news of the closing of the department has been shocking. As one of the current Women’s Studies Postgraduate students, I feel it is only appropriate to gain insights from academics associated with and affected by the closing of Santa Cruz’s department. Bettina Aptheker, who is currently the UC Presidential Co-Chair, of Feminist Critical Race & Ethnic Studies has been teaching at UC Santa Cruz for almost three decades. Bettina Aptheker is a pioneering feminist scholar and activist known for her intersectional approach to women's history, her contributions to Marxist feminism, and her focus on social justice movements, particularly in the context of race, gender, and class. Corresponding via email I had the opportunity to gather further insights.
Dr. Bettina Aptheker
Anna-Katharina Priesterath: Since starting my studies in the Women's Studies program at UCC, my classmates and I have engaged with several influential papers from UC Santa Cruz scholars. This makes the opportunity to ask you about the recent news regarding the closure of the UC Santa Cruz Feminist Studies Department all the more meaningful. Having taught at UC Santa Cruz for nearly three decades, you have made a lasting impact on many students and colleagues. I am excited to hear your thoughts on this important issue.
Looking back at the founding of the Feminist Studies Department at UC Santa Cruz and its legacy, what defining characteristics and key contributions would you highlight as shaping the department and its impact on individuals and the broader community?
Bettina Aptheker: UCSC’s Feminist Studies department was founded primarily by students active in the Women’s Liberation Movement, and it commenced as a program, with faculty support, in the 1974-1975 academic year. It is was among the earliest such programs established, and it was distinguished by the fact that from the beginning students could major in (at most institutions who founded such programs students were only allowed it as a minor. UCSC at that time was only itself 10 years old, and encouraged experimental programs, and undergraduate education, and student involvement. It was originally called Women’s Studies. There were no full-time faculty in the program; rather, faculty in many departments developed courses that could be taken for the major, such as Sociology of Women, Psychology of Women, a variety of courses relating to women’s literature in different periods, a course on Women in American History, and a few courses in film and visual arts.
It was small and vibrant.
By 1978, in order to insure its continued existence, the Dean of Humanities a the time, Helene Moglen, a Literature professor, and a strong supporter, moved to have faculty take over the running of the program, with students playing a subordinated but significant role. This was accomplished and a Women’s Studies Executive Committee was established, of voting faculty with student members, and a staff position was created to manage its day to day affairs, student advising, and so on.
I began teaching in the program as a part-time lecturer in 1981, and renamed the introductory course, Introduction to Feminism. I was the only person directly teaching in the program, and other faculty across the campus generously gave of their time and scholarship and teaching to sustain it. Among the most important and popular courses was one taught by a Stanford-education doctor, Professor Maldonado, in the Biology Department called “Female Physiology and Gynecology." By the mid-1980s we had 114 majors, and a thriving presence on the campus with literally thousands of students taking out courses. Some of our graduates went on to found community organizations including Women Against Rape, the Women’s Health Center with a doctor on staff, and others of our students interned over the years with the Walnut Avenue Women’s Center, to advocate and care for survivors of domestic violence. Some of our students also helped publish a women’s newspaper called Matrix.
With so many majors and such high enrollments, we fought for several years to get the central administration to establish as a department with the appropriate resources to hire our own tenure-track faculty. There was much hostility to this, but when over 60 women faculty across the campus signed a letter demanding its formation, and over 2000 students did the same in their own public statement, an outgoing Chancellor in June 1987 allowed us to move from being a “Program” to being a “Committee,” a lesser status than a department but with the capacity to hire tenure-track faculty. I was the first fire, followed by an African American literature scholar and poet, Akasha Hull. In the early 1990s, we were able to bring on board a then-young and brilliant political theorist Wendy Brown, and a feminist historian, Emily Honig. Our Executive Committee continued. By 1993 we began a “Designated Emphasis” program for graduate students, and faculty began offering graduate courses. Still, it was not until June 1996 that the central administration granted us full department status. We changed our name from Women’s Studies to Feminist Studies in 2004. Likewise, in the late 1990s, we established our own graduate program in addition to the Designated Emphasis option.
Anna-Katharina Priesterath: What led to the decision to close the Feminist Studies Department at UC Santa Cruz, and what factors were considered in this process?
Bettina Aptheker: In more recent years we hired many new faculty, and our faculty, including myself, helped to establish a much needed, long-overdue program in Critical Race & Ethnic Studies (CRES). Again, it began as a program rather than a department, and many faculty in Feminist Studies taught half time in CRES. When CRES was finally and appropriately granted departmental status some of our faculty shifted their positions full-time to CRES and others split their time. In addition, quite a few Feminist Studies faculty had left UCSC or left the department, which resulted in an unsustainable attrition. The five faculty remaining in Feminist Studies (four of whom had joint appointments with CRES) voted to disband the department.
Anna-Katharina Priesterath: I’d love to hear your thoughts on the future of feminist studies at UC Santa Cruz. As a key hub for many of the most influential voices in feminist and gender scholarship, what is your vision for how feminist academia will continue to evolve at the university?
Bettina Aptheker: The Dean of Humanities, Jasmine Alinder, and the Executive Vice-Chancellor, Lori Kletzer, are committed to maintaining the Feminist Studies major and are working out arrangements with appropriate faculty to manage a curriculum. The administrative details of this are still being explored, but the major continues. In addition, we have identified over 50 faculty in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Visual Arts who are feminist scholars, and efforts will be made to establish some kind of broad, feminist scholarly Institute from which events, conferences, and other programming can be developed so that a strong feminist presence on the campus is sustained. All of this is in its preliminary stages. The department will continue as such through June 2025.
Anna-Katharina Priesterath: Lastly, I’d love to ask for your advice to current and future students in Women’s Studies programs. If you could offer just one piece of advice to students in these programs, what would it be?
Bettina Aptheker: To current (and future) students in Feminist Studies I encourage you to follow your passions, study what is of greatest interest to you, and play to your own strengths whether as an artist, a writer, a researcher, a teacher, and so on. Likewise, I encourage a passion for social justice, anti-racism, and for women’s full and complete human rights including reproductive freedom in whatever way is most appropriate for you. Likewise, I encourage a resolute support for transgender people and Lesbian and Gay people, who are being persecuted and demonized in various countries and in different ways, including of course, the United States.
Dr. Evelien Geerts
The Women’s Studies program here at UCC has recently been going through a reorganization structure-wise. The new program director Dr. Evelien Geerts studied herself at UCSC under the supervision of Dr. Bettina Aptheker and shared some of her thoughts with UCC Express.
Dr. Evelien Geerts did her PhD in Feminist Studies with a DE (designated emphasis) in the History of Consciousness as part of the Women’s Studies Department. She is currently the Women's Studies MA and PhD program director and Lecturer in Gender, Women's Studies & Philosophy When looking at where Universities start with closing departments it is undeniable that social sciences, languages, and humanities departments are usually hit the first and hardest.
Geerts writes in a personal statement given to UCC Express that “the disestablishment of the oldest Feminist Studies (formerly Women's Studies) program in the US (it dates from 1974) is absolutely disastrous and a clear sign of the politically troubled times we are currently living in - and not just in the US. I do see this as an indirect consequence of the world-wide neoliberalization of higher education, a Trumpian post-truth politics-driven society in which critical counterthinking is labeled as problematic and even dangerous, and an ongoing attempt of the global anti-gender movement to destroy an academic discipline fueled by a critical feminist and antiracist pedagogical praxis that has, in fact, been devalued as a body of lived experiences-fueled critical theoretical knowledge since it came into being.”
The rise of right-wing voices after the recent election has left a profound impact and spread fear across the States. Misogynistic and sexist speeches trending on and offline have further supported the already existing gender divide. Americans fear a further book ban following Trump’s re-election (source: LA Times). Conservative parental groups have been advocating against education in schools that follow inclusion and the discussion of gender, race, and sexuality. While it is still unclear as to what consequences Trump's re-election will have on the educational sector in the States, there has been a rise of Conservative propaganda on campuses and in classrooms already.
I want to thank Bettina Aptheker and Evelien Geerts for sharing their thoughts with UCC Express.
While the future of feminist academia at UCSC is not clear, it leaves us to hope that feminist scholarship will continue to be supported and shared. As a Women’s Studies major myself, I have witnessed discouraging and problematic hierarchies at university. I think it is incredibly important to not only give students and scholars the space, time, and medium to discuss ongoing gender-based inequalities, racism, oppression, and sexism, but to also encourage more people to pursue degrees related to gender, women, and feminist studies. We are witnessing a rise of hatred and oppression worldwide. Through gaining and sharing knowledge, oppressive patriarchal power structures can be dismantled. For this, we need feminist studies.
