These criteria will then help to determine the best use of the expected new funds. Just as we have started that the study of race and ethnicity is central to the scholarly and pedagogical life of the FAS, so too we believe that this set of subjects should be considered along with others when the allocations of new chairs from the Campaign are made. Rather, as each professorship is endowed and created, the teaching needs across the Faculty will be established, and the new chair will be assigned. We do aim to accept donations, the term of which are sufficiently broad, provided that they fill clear curricular needs in the College, even if those needs are not the highest level of urgency. These ideas relate directly to a number of the issues you raise in your report.
Ethnic studies are inherently comparative.
Those who wish to understand the uniqueness of a particular people can do so most effectively by reference to comparisons with other. Scholars seek to understand why the boundaries of particular ethnic groups change and why this process of ethnic group formation is so fluid. The creation of narrowly-defined administrative or curricular entities in the FAS would be misguided. Our faculty do not favor limiting the study of ethnicity to a handful of groups whose own self-definition has been changing over time and will no doubt continue to do so. Nor is there a good reason to limit, or to privilege, the study of some ethnic groups at the expense of others.