John Cotton of UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School to discuss the black takeover of a computer building at UCSB in 1968 at the conference 1968: A Global Year of Student Driven Change

John W. Cotton, Emeritus Professor with the Gevirtz School and Department of Psychology at UC Santa Barbara, will participate in the panel “The Black Takeover at UCSB” as part of the conference 1968: A Global Year of Student Driven Change on Thursday, November 20 from 7 – 9 pm in UCSB Corwin Pavilion. Dr. Cotton will tell some of the history of the Black Student Union takeover of the Computer Center, discuss the involvement of African-American students from the Education Department (one of whom he recruited to the school from Alabama), and talk about the public discourse and negotiations following the take-over. Cotton will also talk some about the Black Education course (ED 107) that he and a colleague taught twice in this period.

As with the entire conference, this event is free and open to the public. No advance reservation is required. For a full program schedule see the conference's website.

The UC Santa Barbara Department of Black Studies is presenting 1968: A Global Year of Student Driven Change as a way to mark the 40th anniversary of the Black Student takeover of North Hall. While recognizing the courage and insight of the 1968 student awakening, this conference places that Black activism in a comparative context and examines it in relation to at least two other movements, the Mexican student revolt on the eve of the 1968 Olympics and the Paris student uprising of May ’68.

The conference will raise a series of questions about the process by which youth movements brought about fundamental change in the archaeology of power and knowledge in the West and transformed the calculus of hegemony and identity that dominated the United States, Latin America, Western and Eastern Europe in the 1960s.

[John Cotton is available for interviews; contact George Yatchisin at 805 893 5789]
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John Cotton of UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School to discuss the black takeover of a computer building at UCSB in 1968 at the conference 1968: A Global Year of Student Driven Change