Scholar Spotlight: Jorge Huerta
Editor's note: The "Scholar Spotlight" column appears regularly in ATHENews and features interviews with senior and distinguished members of our profession, conducted by members of the Research and Publications Committee, on a wide range of issues related to publication, teaching, research, and the state of the profession. This month's interview was conducted by DJ Hopkins, Assistant Professor and Head of Theatre Studies at San Diego State University.
Jorge Huerta
Associate Chancellor and Chief Diversity Officer (CDO)
at the University of California - San Diego
Colleges and universities that do not recognize this [interrelationship] will produce inferior knowledge based on older paradigms that will, in the long run, be detrimental to the social networks such educational institutions are supposed to serve. (18 August 2007)
The ideal that Wayne eloquently describes, his colleague Jorge Huerta is charged with putting into practice. As Associate Chancellor and Chief Diversity Officer (CDO) at the University of California - San Diego, Huerta is responsible for working with colleagues university-wide and coordinating efforts with the communities of San Diego to enhance the UCSD’s overall diversity. Pursuing diversity at UCSD is a tall order, given California’s legislative history and fickle popular sentiment on this issue. But as demanding as the job of CDO is, it’s really a second career for Huerta.
Professor Jorge Huerta is better known as a leading authority on contemporary Chicana/o and US Latina/o Theatre, as well as a professional director. He is a member of the faculty of the PhD Program in the Department of Theatre and Dance at UCSD, where Huerta holds a Chancellor’s Associates Endowed Chair. He has published many articles, edited three anthologies of plays, and written two scholarly books, Chicano Theatre: Themes and Forms (Bilingual Press, 1982) and Chicano Drama: Performance, Society, and Myth (Cambridge 2000). He has lectured and conducted workshops on Chicana/o theatre throughout the US, Latin America, and Western Europe. Huerta holds a PhD from the University of California Santa Barbara.
And in 2007, Professor Huerta was honored by the Association for Theatre in Higher Education with the award for “Career Achievement in Academic Theater.”
Since January of 2005, Huerta has been on reduced teaching duties in the Department of Theatre and Dance while serving as Associate Chancellor and CDO. We spoke early in the summer of 2007, shortly after the United States Supreme Court determined that “public school systems cannot seek to achieve or maintain integration through measures that take explicit account of a student’s race” (New York Times, 29 June 2007).
But that’s not where our conversation began. Professor Huerta welcomed me at the Chancellor’s offices. Even given his many accomplishments, Jorge Huerta is nothing if not the best of hosts. As a former student, it was great to see him again after a long hiatus. While getting caught up, we found ourselves talking about what we’ve been reading. Huerta referred to a recent publication by a colleague of mine at San Diego State, William Nericcio’s Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the “Mexican” in America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007). Huerta claimed that “Nericcio’s book will change the paradigm.” From this assertion, we started talking about scholarly activity.
D.J.H. If Nericcio is changing the paradigm, what is the paradigm now and where is it going?
Huerta. When I started my research in Chicano theatre, I focused strictly on Chicana/Chicano theatre. That was what I wanted to investigate. I just focused on what they were doing from the mid-1960s onward. And at that time it was very much a quote-unquote “Chicano theatre movement.” They were Chicanos. There were some Mexicans. But the majority of these people were young; they were first generation or second generation. As the years passed, Latinos became a part of this movement. So one of the major shifts is that I can no longer say that we have a “Chicano theatre movement.” It’s a Latino theatre movement. There’s a lot of pan-Latino-ism, if you will, in the overall picture of what’s going on.
The other big change since 1980 is that we have more playwrights and more women playwrights. Now the majority of theatre being produced in what I would call the Chicano-Latino theatre scene is being written by playwrights who are not only trained in very fine MFA programs, such as our own, but are also faculty in many MFA programs across the country. It’s a major, major change.
What plays and theatre do you find exciting right now? Maybe since 2000, since Chicano Drama.
Since the last book… You know one of the most exciting potentials is in LA [Los Angeles], and that’s the Latino Theatre Company. They recently were awarded the facility that used to be called the Los Angeles Theatre Center, and the Latino Theatre Lab was part of that theatre. And they want to be producing multi-cultural theatre there. Culture Clash will be a part of that. Culture Clash of course continues to do exciting things. I always look to them for new stuff, exciting stuff.
Not only that, look at the academy: how many of our playwrights, directors, actors are teaching at universities and colleges? And many of them are teaching Latina / Latino theatre. What we don’t have are a lot of scholars, Chicana and Chicano graduate students and / or young professors right now.
What about Nericcio’s book — does it address issues related to theatre?
Bill [Nericcio] has edited a collection of Oliver Mayer’s plays, so he has a connection to theatre, but in this latest book he talks about literature and cinema — it’s about the representation of the Mexican. And it’s very important to me because my latest project was — before I walked into this office! — a book about comedy and Chicano theatre.
You get to go back to that project soon, though, right?
I started it after the last one came out, you know? I go back to teaching [full time] Winter of next year [2008], then a sabbatical, and that’s when I get back to writing.
Last week, the Supreme Court gaveled down a decision against the integration of public schools. And in 2003, the Court produced a mixed decision involving the University of Michigan that effectively put significant checks on Affirmative Action in university admissions. But these results aren’t anything new to you: the UC system has had checks on Affirmative Action for a long time.
Since 1996.
As the chief Diversity Advocate for this university, how do you work to keep the student body as active and inclusive as it is in the face of ongoing challenges to Affirmative Action?
Well it’s interesting that you would say the “Chief Diversity Advocate.” The title is actually CDO—
Chief Diversity Officer! Sorry!
No, no, the term “advocate” is apt. Because… the man I was just meeting with right before you, John Welch, is the Director of the Office of Academic Diversity and Equal Opportunity. And we go to the faculty and we advocate for diversity — post-Prop. 209! — with this list of best practices, what you can and cannot do under the constraints of the law. There’s a lot happening. [Hands me a sheet of data.] There in front of you is the representation of minorities among ladder-rank faculty. This is from a University of California Task Force. When I walked into this office in January of 05, almost immediately President Dynes appointed this Task Force — I and my counterparts on the other nine campuses. And I don’t have a counterpart on the other nine campuses. No other campus has a quote “Chief Diversity Officer.” I went to a conference sponsored by the American Council for Education on Diversity in Fall of 05 in Phoenix, and there again, I went to a session for Diversity Officers, and people said, “What’s a CDO?” It’s not a new term, it’s very much a part of the corporate structure; corporate has had Chief Diversity Officers for a long time.
The main thing is that the CDO is not a police person. You know, the CDO doesn’t have that kind of power, because you can’t force people to do anything. This Task Force had a summit a year ago last May, May of 06, where the president [of the UC system] was presented with the report, and there was an all-day summit in Oakland, and everybody was there. One of the speakers was the Dean of the Boalt School of Law — [Christopher] Edley, an African-American man, and he said: “Prop. 209 did not tell us to stop caring about diversity.” And I like that, because this is what I say to the faculty. You have these constraints that you cannot target anymore — because the voters of the State of California said that they didn’t think that was right, that it was unfair, that people would get special treatment, preferential treatment because of their color or their gender, etc. So you can’t target. However, the federal government — at least until last week! — the federal government is still insisting on — demanding — that all of its federal contract drawers abide by Affirmative Action guidelines which say that you cannot discriminate. Which in a way says that you must target.
Federal dollars come to this place far more than any other dollars, so the feds’re constantly threatening to audit us, and they do audit what you’re doing. So it’s this disjuncture, you know? I go to the faculty and say, “Look, we have to talk about diversity,” and they’re saying, “But wait, it’s against the law.” Well, not if you’re in the sciences, not if you’re a recipient of NIH or other federal dollars that say “I want you to diversify your medical school, and here’s a few million dollars for you to start a program, that you’re going to start mentoring students at the undergraduate level, with graduate students from the medical school, who’ll mentored by faculty, etc. A lot of my colleagues on the faculty don’t know — I didn’t know, until I walked in here — that there was this little caveat in Prop. 209, that you cannot target unless not to do so would cause you to lose federal dollars. So I can say that when I’m talking to people from the STEM fields, science, technology, engineering, and math. I can’t say that in the arts and humanities—
Because our departments don’t get federal research funds…
…from the NEA, etc. So, there’s this one little — it’s kind of a loophole, one that we’re waiting for somebody to fight in the courts. This week I wrote to one of my counterparts, I said (laughing): “One day I won’t have a job and I can go back to teaching!” But it’s troublesome… I mean that measure, what they [the US Supreme Court] decided last week; it’s very confusing if you study it. The first thing that I had to do was really try to analyze this: so, how’s this going to effect what we’re doing here? It’s very, very confusing. I know that the dissidents [dissenting justices] felt that it was a blow, that Affirmative Action was dead. Roberts himself said no, that this was not true. So, I don’t know…
Roberts cited Brown. It was interesting that on both sides of the decision, the justices cited Brown vs. Board of Education…
(Incredulous) Yeah!
…to justify their decision.
So, D.J., I go back to what I said originally, that it didn’t tell us to stop caring. We just read today that in 2050… I’ll be long gone — you’ll still be around, I hope!
Fingers crossed.
(Laughing again) None of us are getting out of this alive, you know! In 2050, 51% of the State of California will be Hispanic. So [Affirmative Action] is not only practical — well, it is, it’s practical. Are we going to become a South Africa, for god’s sake? Right now, 50% of the Hispanics and the African-Americans in the State of California do not graduate high school, for god’s sake! Last fall — talking about how we get African-Americans into this institution — fewer than 2,000 African-American students in the State of California qualified at graduation for entrance to the UC.
To the entire University of California system?
The system. So, you divide that by nine campuses — it was less than 2,000 individuals who qualified — that’s what? A little over 200 per school. Two hundred! And you know that the top students are being lured to Harvard, to USC, to Stanford. So, the numbers are so small it becomes very, very troublesome. What is the responsibility of the University of California — and the CSUs and the community colleges — to get these people through?
And what is the responsibility of universities to build that number, to work to increase the number of college-eligible minority applicants?
Please! We have now a National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, which was formed at that conference in Phoenix, and I’m a founding member of the board — (laughing) lord have mercy!
That’s what happens when you go to conferences.
And (laughing) we’re going to have our second board meeting next month in [Washington] DC, and we’re going to have our next conference of ACE [American Council on Education] in San Diego in February. So, that National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, that’s all the top-notch schools, and it’s an incredible network. And so, what I’m coming to is a pipeline project. We are working closely with the CSUs in an effort to get your students [pointing at me] into our MA and PhD programs. And we need a helluva lot more of it. Here it is [Handing me another document], best practices for the CUC — this is the California Universities Consortium, Advancing Faculty and Graduate Student Diversity. All the UCs, Caltech, Stanford: we just had a conference call this morning where we’re ready to quantify [the results of] a pipeline between people who are ABD and our job opportunities, just within these Tier 1 universities. And much talk has been made, but we haven’t yet done enough about coordinating with the CSUs. Because historically you go to a department and you say to them, “You’ve got to broaden your outreach,” [as opposed to] “we’ll only recruit from the top ten schools in our field.” Well the CSUs are not necessarily in the top ten in any field. And I am a product of the California State — it was Los Angeles State College, for god’s sake, and I’m very proud of that. You come from a people school, don’t you?
I do, I went to Penn State.
No, unh-unh, that’s a research school. Anyway! There’s all this elitism in the UC system and we’ve got to overcome that, so we’re going to the conferences, sending people out to the historically black colleges… This is going on and on, forgive me.
No, this is really valuable, as somebody who’s the director of an MA program at one of these CSUs. One of the strengths of our program is in preparing students for PhD study. I’m very interested, for purely selfish reasons, in developing that pipeline.
Why can’t we have more exchange between your students and ours?
No reason. Maybe we could have a little summit?
That would be great. Our programs have a lot to share with each other.
I want to ask you about teaching. How has your approach to pedagogy changed over the years?
Over the years here, I have taught acting, I’ve taught invisible theatre, I’ve taught street theatre, political theatre. I’ve taught, as you know, from the Greeks to the Renaissance — I was hired to teach one class in Chicano Theatre and all these other courses in dramatic literature. So, how has my teaching changed? Over the years, the “French disease” moved in, but we didn’t have a PhD [program] so I didn’t have to worry about that.
Um, you mean syphilis?
The French disease! (Laughing) Haven’t you heard “theory” called “the French disease”? You know, we old farts call it the French disease. When the French disease came in — and you know it well, and all you other brilliant kids — I thought I’d go nuts! But I didn’t have to worry that much because we didn’t have a PhD. So, definitely, when we initiated that PhD, and even with [the program in] dramaturgy, all of a sudden we had to get more serious here, because you have to be hirable. And thank god everybody else on the faculty was a theorist, you know. So I keep calling myself the non-theorist. I have to read those people, and I understand some of it and I don’t understand all of it. But I think it’s important because the academy thinks it’s important.
How has my pedagogy changed? In terms of dramatic literature… You know, I want to do a presentation where I show, in 1970 when I went to graduate school: here’s a shelf, and here are all the books on Chicano theatre; it’s an empty shelf. Here are all the anthologies of Chicano plays; an empty shelf. In 1971, we had the first anthology, the Teatro Campesino collection… Until today, we add Latino — not even Latin American — and we cannot teach all the plays that the Chicanas and Chicanos have written and produced since 1970, and / or the Puerto Ricans or the Cubans, and now the Dominicans and the other groups that are also beginning to write for theatre.
I find myself focusing not just on Chicano theatre but expanding beyond, going into the gay / les in US Latino theatre — I can’t teach all of those plays, it’s a huge movement, a huge movement. And then Latin America is a whole other world down there.
You know, teaching to me — Valdes said once, “Playwriting is a noble profession.” Yes, it is, but teaching, teaching… I mean the responsibility, the opportunity, the obligation — it’s awesome.