Origins of AC

Origins of American Cultures at UC Berkeley

Introduction to the American Cultures Requirement (2022)

Introduction

There is a direct connection between the anti-apartheid movement and the birth of American Cultures. There were these sparks ignited in South Africa …and political repression brought South Africa into the news, which led to longshore workers in San Francisco refusing to take South African cargo off ships ... and led to a movement across the country that particularly took hold on college campuses, and Berkeley especially.
Professor Pedro Noguera, Dean, USC School of Education, UC Berkeley Student Body President, 1985
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Home of the trailblazing American Cultures (AC) graduation requirement, the American Cultures Center at UC Berkeley was not formed in isolation.

In the 1960s, civil rights legislation contributed to traditionally white institutions of higher education experiencing an influx of BIPOC students, and these students demanded a curriculum reflective of “a people's history” of resistance and social movements. Thus, in 1968, the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) was born at UC Berkeley, drawing from the Black Student Union Movement across the country. A strong multi-racial coalition, TWLF's organizing was critical to the eventual creation of the UC Berkeley Department of Ethnic Studies, and many other student and community resources. 

In 1986, the UC Board of Regents voted to divest from South African apartheid at the demands of student/community organizing in the Bay Area inspired by the decade of unrest and civil disobedience of Black schoolchildren in Soweto, South Africa. This political momentum and increasingly diverse student bodies, faculties, and curricula, built the foundations of the demand for American Cultures. 

In 1989, that student-driven desire became a reality and the AC requirement became the first and only UC Berkeley-wide graduation requirement. In the decades since, the AC Center, initially built to support the AC requirement, has endevoured to bring racial and social justice to the forefront of higher education, steeped in community engagement, lived experience, and transformative change. 

[The American Cultures requirement is] one of the most important curriculum-reform projects in the history of this campus. American Cultures challenges each discipline to raise questions that they had never raised before, and in the process, they have uncovered unknown aspects of their own disciplines.
Ling-chi Wang, Professor Emeritus of Asian American Studies

AC Timeline

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Collage of Historical TWLF Strikes superimposed over "Tumbling the Ivory Tower" text
Image of Students of Color Attending UC Berkeley 1960s protests
Image of a TWLF Coalition Serpent Style Protest on Bancroft Avenue in 1969
Newspaper clipping with photograph of the Berkeley Barb's coverage of the first TWLF strike in 1969
Screenshot of UC Berkeley TWLF's first demands from 1969
"United Against Apartheid" group protests South African Apartheid at UC Berkeley in Fall 1977

Chapter 1

Political Uprisings & Demographic Transformations: In the 1960s, institutions of higher education see a rapid increase in students of color at what were traditionally white colleges and universities in the U.S. Before 1965, the majority of Black students in the country were enrolled at Traditionally Black College and Universities. The increase in enrollment is primarily due to several landmark legislations, including the 1965 Higher Education Act (HEA) and the 1965 Immigration Nationality Act (INA). The HEA greatly expands financial aid to college students, allowing more students of color to attend more colleges and universities... Read More

Chapter 2

 The "Opening of the American Mind" - Curricular Insurgencies: “As the more diverse student body demanded a more diverse education, the nearly all-white faculties at US universities fiercely guarded the notion that a proper education emerged from studying the whitewashed canon of Great Books and viewed anything that might question the objectivity of that premise as an unwarranted political intrusion. The faculty attitude around the country was, ‘We let you in here. Come in, sit down, and enjoy the show.'” Professor Troy Duster, Changing the Culture of the Academy, 2007 As the number of enrolled undergraduate students of color increased at UC Berkeley, so did a demand for ... Read More

Chapter 3

Partnered Struggles - Global Uprisings against South African Apartheid and Desegregating the UC Berkeley curriculum: In 1976, halfway across the world in Soweto, South Africa, Black school children bring years of unrest and civil disobedience to the apartheid state, and the vibrations are felt in California and in the ports of San Francisco and Oakland, an anti-apartheid boycott, inspired by the Soweto schoolchildren grows. In 1986, UC Berkeley students join the SF and Oakland longshore and Warehouse workers to organize against South African goods being disembarked and divestment of the UC Regent pension investments from South African apartheid businesses... Read More

Chapter 4

Building the AC Requirement: Passed by the UC Berkeley Senate in 1989, the AC requirement was the first and only campus-wide graduation requirement for all UC Berkeley undergraduate students. When the requirement was first created, there was not one course on campus that could meet the comparative parameters of the requirement.  A massive feat, the curriculum had to be built within two years to ensure that incoming students in 1991 had the necessary courses to prepare for graduation, catalyzing the most dramatic ideological effort in the university’s history... Read More

Chapter 5

The War on Diversity, and the Growth of Colorblindness: As multiculturalism becomes the byword for the state of California and the UC system becomes ‘minority-majority’, just a few years into the creation of the AC curriculum, the state of California is the bellwether of ‘the culture wars’. By the mid-1990s, the political ideology of colorblindness, explaining racial matters as the outcomes of nonracial dynamics shapes the national discourse, and the political slingshot against demographic diversity and race-centered public policies curdled by Prop 187, Prop  209 and ... Read More

East Bay Express, September 2014 Issue

Chapter 6

On Beyond 30: Everything is the same and nothing is the same. Entering its third decade, the AC curriculum is the site of new energy and rebuilding, responding to the global conversation on state-violence and anti-Black racism. Creating pedagogical spaces for faculty to exchange ideas in this most intellectually demanding, often emotionally exhausting and politically busy space, AC programs have been created at the apex of research, teaching, learning, and racial justice. Recently, Teaching in Troubled Times, Data Justice, and the Creative Discovery Fellows (CDF) programs, have been formed to create new framings and build new ideas to meet the historical juncture of the complex political times... Read More

AC News & Publications Archive

AC Newsletters Archive

Our center publishes newsletters that showcase recent news and events, faculty, students, community partners, and upcoming developments. All American Cultures Center newsletters since December 2013 are archived on this page. 

Publications

This page houses publications that recount the American Cultures Requirement and the American Cultures Requirement on the UC Berkeley campus.

Reports

Reports have been important tools in documenting and defending the AC requirement over the years. This page documents several of these relevant reports.

View of Telegraph Avenue from Sather Gate on a sunny day

Press Releases

Throughout its decades as the campus's signature curriculum, the American Cultures Requirement has been featured in numerous publications including the the East Bay Express, the Daily Californian, the Berkeley News Center, and the California Report

AC Anniversaries Archive

Past anniversary recaps