Daniel Solorzano
        Education

            The academic focus of education professor Daniel Solorzano combines the worst of both worlds: the all-encompassing racial preoccupation of a Mark Q. Sawyer, with a McLarenite mania for Freirean “critical pedagogy” educational theory.  A quick look at Solorzano’s recent publications gives a taste for this ideological pairing, with titles like “Using Critical Race Theory, Freire Problem Posing Method, and Case Study Research to Confront Race and Racism in Education” and “Teaching and Social Change: Reflections on a Freirean Approach in a College Classroom.”

            Radical academic theorizing of this variety would be mostly harmless (if utterly unworthy of state funding) were its effect purely abstract.  However, as the notes from Solorzano’s October 8, 2001 presentation to the UCLA Teacher Education Program make clear, the goal is revolution in the classroom.  Critical race (or Freirean Pedagogy) “[t]ries to develop a curriculum and pedagogy that merges the abstract world of theory with the concrete world of the everyday life of Students of Color.”  Note the honorific capitalizing of “Students of Color”: this indicates that they are Very Important and strikes a blow against Those White Devils.  Freirean pedagogy, according to the notes, “[u]ses race/ethnicity as its primary category of analysis and a central part of the curriculum.”  Also coming in for special attention are “gender, class, sexuality, and immigrant status.”  In short, differences and division are emphasized, with Students of Color made to understand that they are Victims of Society. 

The advantage of this new victim-centric style of teaching is that it “[c]hallenges the dominance of the methods of research, categories of analysis, theories used in interpreting evidence, and pedagogical practices that distort or block our understanding of Students of Color.”  In truth, this is nothing but the nihilistic cry of “Burn, baby, burn!” expressed in high academic cant.  And as such, it fuels a worldview of revolution rather than evolution.  For the Freireans, teaching must not be reformed, but rather, torn to the ground and rebuilt in a wholly new form imbued with political purpose.  If Solorzano and his critical race compatriots succeed, they can realize Freire’s dream that “[e]ducation generally and schools in particular…[no longer be] neutral institutions.”

Solorzano’s adoption of this viewpoint has been long in development.  As he recalls in his contribution to the book “Education is Politics: Critical Thinking Across Differences, Postsecondary,” Solorzano first made successful use of Freirean pedagogy in the 1970s with his Chicano Studies class students at a Southern California community college. 

 After Solorzano lead the students through a critical examination of media portraits of Chicanos, the students concluded (wonder of pedagogical wonders) that Chicanos were indeed unfairly depicted as being primarily thugs or gang members.  In response (and Freireanism is all about responding), the students joined with local and statewide organizations to boycott and publicly criticize the movie studios who had produced the offending films.  As a result of their hard work, (liberal) Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley refused to attend the premiere of one targeted film.  This illustration of “personal empowerment” conveys perfectly the goals and practice of critical pedagogy.  Regardless of students immaturity and nascent stage of political development, Solorzano and fellow critical pedagogy theorists openly advocate for politicizing the classroom.  By encouraging not just radical thought but radical action, Solorzano deviates that much farther from the legitimate mission of public schools. 

            In considering the day-to-day effect that faculty like Solorzano have on UCLA’s essential operations, it must be noted that Solorzano, in his capacity as then-chairman of the Department of Education, was sued by former graduate student Dori Kozloff for reverse racial discrimination.  The 2005 civil rights lawsuit was filed in response to alleged harassment (which began in October 2003) by Kozloff’s academic advisor Sandra Harding.  Harding, the then-director of the Center for the Study of Women, told Kozloff that she could not write her thesis on the “limited whiteness of white women.”  When Kozloff pointed out that black women were not constrained by any similar topical taboos in the way that she was in this case, Harding allegedly admitted as much but explained, “there’s a difference.”  Harding also allegedly called Kozloff an “ignorant racist,” and warned that if Kozloff persisted with her thesis topic, she would be committing “academic suicide.” 

While the case is still under adjudication, the initial 23-page complaint is a valuable inside look at the operations of Solorzano’s education department and its racial double-standard.  Consider the victim: Kozloff was no conservative ideologue, just a hard-working 50-year-old single mother who had graduated from UCLA’s master’s program with a 3.957 GPA and a $10,000 merit scholarship.  What GSEIS and Solorzano’s colleagues allegedly did to Kozloff was inexcusable, yet was utterly typical of the radical’s intolerance for dissent.

            While in academic focus Solorzano is a McLaren clone, none of his public statements convey the latter’s fervent desire for a Marxist revolution.  Instead, Solorzano is preoccupied with race, specifically (and predictably), with folks that look like him.  Since 2000, Solorzano has co-authored four studies on behalf of radical groups.  The most famous is an “expert report written in conjunction with the Defendants in the case of Gratz, et al. v. Bollinger, et al,” once that case had moved up to the federal level.  Titled “Campus Racial Climate at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor: A Case Study,” the 119-page behemoth attacks “an emerging orthodoxy that suggests that America is now a color-blind, egalitarian society where racial and gender discrimination are relics of a distant past.” 

            In response to this false idea, the report sets out to prove that “Blacks, Latinos and other students of color continue to be targets of discrimination and are denied equal opportunity to achieve.”  While claiming to be a “systematic, empirically-based examination,” the actual data is so much sociological claptrap: “data from focus groups, personal interviews, surveys, university records, newspapers, natural observations and other sources.” 

The methodology alone places the study’s validity in doubt.  For example, the focus groups worked with a mere 68 total students between the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University.  Quotes from these focus groups pepper the balance of the report in great profusion.  Unfortunately, because they are resolutely personal opinions (from undergraduates, no less), quoting them in great number does nothing to make a convincing case.  In fact, some of the quotes reveal a truly circular logic behind the cries of racism.  One Latino student commented, “It seems like the forces to get rid of affirmative action have a much larger voice than the forces that are trying to protect affirmative action and there’s a lot of misinformation fed into the White population about who affirmative action helps and the effects that it has.”  This complaint, detailing an entirely policy-centered dispute, is presented by Solorzano as proof of a hostile campus environment.  Apparently it’s racist to question sacred cows like affirmative action, or to suggest that they perhaps they harm more than help. 

If it’s possible, other student complaints are even more frivolous.  A black female complains, “Every time I leave my room, I’m conscious of the fact that I’m Black. I’m really conscious of the fact that people are looking at me and going, ‘She’s here on affirmative action.’”  Whether or not people the student’s racial paranoia is justified (the fact that it’s paranoia should be the first clue), it is still true that the female was admitted under affirmative action.  But according to these self-selected focus group perma-victims, the fact that they feel self-conscious about their race means that someone else is to blame.  From this vantage point, this black female’s complaint looks a lot more like a guilty conscience. 

Echoing the black female’s theme, a Latino wails, “One of the biggest divisions right now is this affirmative action case, because a lot of the White students believe that affirmative action needs to go away. It’s going to make me feel not wanted if my peers feel that I’m not worthy of being here.”  Again and again, the complaints read like this.  The fact that I feel guilty about the better-qualified white student I displaced – that’s racism.  The fact that people want to eliminate affirmative action – that’s also racism.  Meanwhile, the reader is left to wonder just how a compendium of feelings and impressions can masquerade as a legitimate legal report.  And for that matter, just how was any judge with half a brain going to receive a report that made such asinine observations?

The Michigan “expert report” in question, while billed as “commissioned by the student interveners” in the Grutter case, was actually funded in part by the Society of American Law Teachers, a group headquartered at the University of Alabama Law School.  The group’s three-fold mission centers on:

All of that is pretty much Solorzano’s political and academic philosophy in a nutshell.  Birds of a feather, it turns out, certainly do flock together.

Along with his role in the Michigan case, Solorzano got his hands muddy with another radical legal project, co-authoring the 2002 “Latina Equity in Education Project,” listed in Solorzano’s resume as a “report submitted to the Latina Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.”  Like his colleague Gary Blasi, Solorzano also aided an ACLU litigation effort, Daniel v. the State of California, with his co-authored report “Remedying Unequal Opportunities for Successful Participation in Advanced Placement Courses in California High Schools: A Proposed Action Plan.”  And, in the same year that Solorzano aided the Michigan affirmative action defense, he also co-authored “A Case Study of Racial Microaggressions and Campus Racial Climate at the University of California, Berkeley,” used in the case of Castaneda, et al. v. UC Regents, et al.  There’s little doubt that Solorzano’s Berkeley report was just as flaky and tendentious as his Michigan report.

In his other encounter with the University of California Regents, Solorzano and three other UCLA radicals (Walter Allen, Don Nakanishi and Jeannie Oakes) sent out a press release taking issue with UC Regents Chair John Moores.  His crime was a single 2004 op-ed in Forbes magazine, expressing concerns with the sub-par academic records of the UC’s minority admits relative to the records of many white and Asian applicants who were rejected.  The press release slammed Moores for supposedly:

In light of Solorzano’s own record, the charges of engaging in “Racial Politics” and “Class Politics” is a clear-cut case of the pot calling the kettle black.  Unless that phrase is racist, which it now probably is.

On balance, Daniel Solorzano is hardly the worst education professor at UCLA.  This, however, is no defense of his actions, merely an acknowledgement that he has even more noxious colleagues.  Thanks to the relentless efforts of Solorzano and others, critical pedagogy has transitioned from mere indoctrinationist theory to the virtual bedrock of an entire program.