Ms. Janet Spear,

I applaud your use of the term &quot;typical&quot; to describe Dr. Mariscal response to the injustices that are being played out in California&#039;s higher education system.  It is &quot;typical&quot; for people of color to speak out and voice criticism to the unfair and often times bigoted practices of government and groups in power.  So, yes, minorities and all others who are experiencing the &quot;dark side&quot; of California&#039;s mismanagement should &quot;typically&quot; speak out as Dr. Mariscal has so eloquently done.

Second, your statement that ethnic studies is &quot;nonsense&quot; is completely unfounded.  Why stop there? Why don&#039;t we reevaluate the &quot;value&quot; of British literature, American studies, the entire English department.  Don&#039;t they promote and educate a form of &quot;ethnic studies?&quot;  Your narrow and dare I say bigoted criticism of ethnic studies is short sighted and ill advised.  

Thirdly, most of these &quot;ethnic studies&quot; departments already function with a limited budget and often list professors as &quot;associates.&quot;  In other words, the elimination of these departments would not only reduce the quality of education at universities but would do little in reducing spending (perhaps a university should reevalute the cost of athletic departments as an alternative).  

Ms. Spear to reduce the quality work and knowledge produced by professors in the humanities as &quot;nonsensical&quot; would negate the value of education and a democracy&#039;s responsibility to provide a quality service to all of its citizens and residents.  It isn&#039;t just engineers and mathmaticians that make the world go round.  Last I checked it wasn&#039;t an engineer or biologist who was elected to the American presidency.  In fact, we haven&#039;t had an engineer or the like in 80 years (Herbert Hoover--Great Depression?  Wait, you would need history to know that and of course you find that field to be &quot;nonsense.&quot;)