Claremont : Professor for Ethnic Studies

Students who have been pressuring Scripps College to increase racial and ethnic diversity have won a commitment from the college to hire a full-time professor in Hispanic/Chicano studies for a one-year term this fall while undertaking a search for a permanent appointment in the fall of 1994.

Scripps President Nancy Y. Bekavac, who earlier had said the college would not fill the one-year job, said students “made a convincing case” for making the appointment instead of dividing Hispanic/Chicano studies classes among part-time instructors.

Bekavac disclosed the decision last week in the latest in a series of meetings with students from Liberation through Education, a group that took over the Administration Building at Pomona College for two days early this month to demand racial and ethnic diversity in faculty hiring at the Claremont Colleges.

Bekavac said Scripps will join in a task force with other Claremont Colleges to consider establishing an Asian-American studies program and will encourage proposals for a Jewish studies program.