Establishing and Defending Chicana/o Studies
Keeping Up With Harry’s
Molting History
By
Rodolfo F. Acuña

Establishing and defending Chicana/o Studies is a science. As in the case of child development, for example, you have to be current with the research and the world around you. It is important to read body language and decipher meanings. In the case of California State University, it is a matter of keeping up with the administration.

As Stuart Chase wrote in Tyranny of Words, “Without the ability to translate words into verifiable meanings, most people are the inevitable victims of both commercial and literary fraud”. Therefore, words are important.

At CSUN, Harry Hellenbrand is the provost, a formidable position. He earns over $250,000 a year and has six figure assistants who do his bidding. Harry is a master of double speaks. He could have been the inspiration for the 1960s/70s TV character Maxwell Smart. Harry reminds me of another Chase quote in The Saturday Review of Literature of Herbert Philbrick who said “the McCarthyites and demogogues … make the work of the FBI more difficult by confusing the innocent with the guilty.”

Although Harry has a Ph.D. in English, I have difficulty finding meaning to his words. As Chase has said: “For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who do not, no proof is possible.” For those of us who want to educate the poor and improve communication, proof is essential.

Harry’s newest self-published piece titled “Molting Season” is either a euphemistic masterpiece or intentionally conceived to create intellectual chaos. I presume that Harry is using the dictionary definition of molting: “To shed periodically part or all of a coat or an outer covering, such as feathers, cuticle, or skin, which is then replaced by a new growth.” Dr. Chaos adds, “The creature is born again to find a new form that fits.”

Here I am confused, has Harry become a Catholic and now believes in the resurrection –or is what he is really saying is that public education is dead – long live privatization. That rising student costs are part of his new reality.

Throughout the piece, Harry invokes the spirit of the new campus motto “CSUN Shines”:

At CSUN, we are well on the way toward discovering that new shape. With 40,000 students, we are one of the most diverse universities in the US. Our graduation figure, which we are working to push over 50% for students who do no transfer, still exceeds the rate that student aid and SATs ‘predict.’ We are increasing research—and students involved in research. Indeed, we are developing new capabilities to enter regional partnerships that improve K-12, develop both high-end and blue-collar jobs, and nurture resilient use of local resources.

Harry adds, “Some people resent and/or deny that we have molted the old skin of a state university….” This statement adds nothing to the discussion and does not answer important questions raised by this so-called molting; it further confuses the discussion by paternalistically adding “And who really can blame them? In the old shape we were totally dependent on the state.”

From my perspective Harry has taken the molting too seriously and has shed his liberal credentials and become a fan of Ayn Rand. This molting is not accidental or natural and the truth be told, Harry no longer considers higher education a right. The neoliberals have won so let’s join the new order.

Harry having spent most of his career in administration confuses reality. “We taught more or less lower middle-class kids with more or less groomed grammar. We were dismissive of research because it purloined our mission; we frowned on Extension. It was something UC Davis did with beekeepers.”

Harry simply distorts reality. I have been at CSUN for over 45 years and we have never taught primarily lower middle class kids. They were overwhelmingly white and middle and many upper middle class. Even among minorities CSUN has cherry picked the cream of the crop and is increasingly like the hospitals that turn away those who cannot qualify or pay.

Yet Harry goes after the critics (i.e., Chicana/o Studies) writing, “The irony is, though, that if these critics kept their invisible hands off of us, we would do even better. Despite decreasing state funds, a handful of state universities like CSUN are reinventing themselves successfully. We are ‘diversifying’ funding sources because states have abandoned state universities, as these institutions have become more ethnically and socioeconomically diverse.”

For two years we have been trying to get an answer to the question of how students are not being ripped off at the dorms by paying $800 a bed a month with no kitchen when they can rent one for $400 a month off-campus. He has ignored the question of transparency in how student funds are spent. And refused to give us an accurate accounting of faculty diversity.

How does the Tseng College benefit low income students? Thirty years ago my students could find on campus employment, how has the molting benefited them? Harry has never explained how this is not privatization. Specifically how does it “underwrite our ability to admit more qualified students from LA. And they supplement the base salary of participating tenured and tenure-track faculty. Also, these funds are helping the new Extension building. Its completion frees up for our use a large space in the Extension/bookstore complex.”

Again it is the cliché “CSUN Shines.” We should discuss that for over twenty years the Tseng College has been occupying space belonging to the public sector in many cases displacing public instruction.

The second portion of Harry’s convoluted claim is that CSUN was in the past dismissive of research. This is hogwash. The reason that I published was that I knew publications protected me. Research was downplayed by the administration only when it wanted to promote its cronies. I suggest that Harry know the history before he distorts it.

History matters, Harry. Faculty research in great part reflects the scholarly prestige of the administration. Jim Cleary who belongs to the pre-molted leadership was a recognized scholar. Presidents with mediocre academic records did not become the rule until the 1990s when the molting began. One could argue that hard academic production declined during the moltation (mutation) process.

Harry claims “we are going to push hard to increase faculty, staff, and administrative diversity.” I had conversations with four former provosts all of whom admitted that racism was the cause for the lack of diversity. However, Harry has denied that there is institutional racism. The result is that we are at the same point that we were 45 years ago — if you take Chicana/o Studies and the other ethnic studies departments out of the equation Mexican origin faculty is about 3 percent.

I could ramble on responding to Harry’s intellectual chaos. However, there is too much work to be done and we must keep in mind that Harry is a post-modernist; he invents his own reality to fit his pocketbook. Chicana/o Studies is vital to countering this molting process. The Chicana/o and Latino population is growing daily and they face the same problems they faced 45 years ago: lack of identity, lack of skills and mentoring. Critical thinking is essential to translate this new molted reality.

All memory is contextualized by history. If you distort the past, present thinking is necessarily distorted and confused by the Harry’s of the world who don’t read our history and don’t know the history of the institutions they are molting.