Students Protest Refusal to Hire Chicano Studies Professor : Education: UC Santa Barbara turned down outspoken teacher Rudy Acuna on political grounds, activists say. School officials deny any bias.

In a scene reminiscent of Chicano campus protests 20 years earlier, more than 500 Latino students and others converged on the UC Santa Barbara campus Thursday to protest the university’s failure to hire a controversial Chicano studies professor from Cal State Northridge.

Members of MEChA, a Latino student group, traveled from as far as San Diego and Berkeley to support Chicano activist and historian Rudy Acuna, who alleged that UC Santa Barbara discriminated against him on political grounds when the school rejected his bid to become its first full-time Chicano studies professor.

“They said I would set up a dictatorship, that I should be insulated within a larger department,” said Acuna, 58, founder of Cal State Northridge’s Chicano studies department, one of the largest in the nation.

“It was a committee of all white males and they just didn’t like my politics,” Acuna said.

University officials denied any bias, saying that Acuna was treated the same as any job candidate.

“He’s way off base,” said Julius Zelmanowitz, associate vice chancellor. “All appointment cases are treated the same way through the same elaborate process. We make sure various safeguards are observed.”

Acuna, who said he plans to sue the university for job discrimination, applied for the position in December at the invitation of Chicano studies professors at UC Santa Barbara. His qualifications were reviewed by two committees of faculty members. They concluded that he is more of an activist than a scholar, which “could well exercise a chilling effect on objective scholarship,” according to a report given to Acuna.

“This is a political appointment more than a scholarly one,” the report said. “Acuna is a polemicist more than a seeker for truth, and his appointment is therefore biased.”

Acuna said UC Santa Barbara officials disregarded letters of recommendation as being the work of his “political cronies” because they came from Chicano leaders.

He said the faculty committees judged the eight books he has authored as not being scholarly enough, denouncing one, “Occupied America,” as a “cult book.”

Acuna said his books were carefully researched. He said the committee dismissed scholarly articles he had written for newspapers and other publications.

He said UC Santa Barbara officials want Chicano history taught from a white perspective.

Acuna also charged that he was not given full copies of documents written by the committees that evaluated him.

Zelmanowitz denied the charges, but declined to discuss Acuna’s allegations, saying that personnel matters are private under state law.

Zelmanowitz said the school is continuing to search for a qualified full-time Chicano studies professor.

He defended the university’s hiring practices, saying that only Acuna had been rejected out of the 13 most recent Latino applicants for teaching jobs.

Zelmanowitz said the university welcomed Thursday’s demonstration as “an absolutely appropriate way for students to express themselves.”

In a rally organized by El Congreso, a campus student group allied with MEChA, students heard about 50 speakers support Acuna, including students and Chicano studies faculty members from UC Santa Barbara and Cal State Northridge.

“Mediocrity and conformity are often rewarded because they’re not threatening to the status quo,” Claudine Michel, a black studies professor, told the crowd.

Estimates of the number of Acuna supporters at the rally ranged from 500 by campus officials to 1,000 by rally organizers. After the speeches, the crowd marched to the university’s administration building.