A revised Latino and Latine Studies minor will no longer require students to take a Spanish language class beginning in Fall 2026, as part of a curriculum overhaul for humanities-based programs.
The 21-credit minor will “streamline” course requirements, said Ames Hawkins, director of the School of Communication and Culture.
Hawkins said the goal is to make the minor accessible, while exposing students to multiple perspectives.
“I feel as though we are offering students a cluster of courses that provides multiple disciplinary perspectives, topical perspectives,” Hawkins said, “and has access to a variety of faculty, to give them a really good content area overview over Latin American studies.”
The Black World Studies and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies minors, also 21 credits, are undergoing similar restructuring. Each has fewer than 10 students currently.
The revised Latino and Latine Studies minor also will not require separate Hispanic and Latin American history courses, although faculty said the content will be folded into other required courses.
Among the courses students will be required to take are: “Introduction to Latin American Studies,” “Gender, Culture and the Arts in Latin America” and “Latine in the U.S.” They also can choose either “Afro-Latin and Caribbean: US Musical Crosscurrents” or “Latine/x Theatre and Performance.”
The old minor was 18 credits and also required “Introduction to Latin American Studies,” as well as six credits of language. Students could then choose three courses from a list of 12, including “History of the Caribbean: To 1800,” “History of Mexico and Central America” and “Hispanics in the U.S. Since 1800,” among others.
Marcelo Sabatés, a professor in the School of Communication and Culture and coordinator of the minor, said history will still be taught.
“I think, epistemologically speaking, for a creative school, you can have a very good education in Latin American and Latino studies without a dedicated history class, because the history is going to pop up in Latin American studies,” Sabatés said.
The changes at Columbia mirror decisions unfolding at other colleges and universities. Across the country, colleges are increasingly consolidating language and history-based programs, often folding them into broader interdisciplinary curricula.
In April, Syracuse University announced it would be eliminating 93 of its more than 400 academic programs, including its Latino-Latin American Studies degree. The University of North Texas is also cutting its Latin American Studies major, one of more than 70 academic programs being eliminated as the school tries to address a $45 million budget shortfall.
Higher education experts say these shifts are being driven by declining enrollment in humanities programs, budget constraints and growing pressure to prioritize career-focused fields. As a result, schools are increasingly consolidating smaller programs, particularly in language, history and area studies, into broader interdisciplinary offerings.
But the move has sparked concern about the loss of depth in those subjects, including at Columbia, where other course offerings for next semester also have been consolidated under broader topics, the Chronicle previously reported.
“If it’s integrated into other classes, then I don’t think they would spend a lot of time on those subjects,” said Josefina Medrano, a senior marketing major who took a Latin American-based history class.
One of the biggest changes in the Latino and Latine Studies minor is the removal of Spanish language requirements, which were previously required.
Hawkins said the School of Communication and Culture will still offer Spanish language courses outside of the minor.
Sabatés said he supported the removal of the language requirements in the minor.
Students who are already proficient in the language didn’t need the courses, which had to be substituted to complete the old minor requirements, he said.
“People need to learn the culture and the arts, and you can do that without learning the language,” Sabatés said.
Currently, there are nine students in the minor, which has been renamed from Latino and Latin American Studies.
The college became a Hispanic-serving institution in 2024 when a quarter of the student body identified as Hispanic, the Chronicle previously reported. Currently, 28.2% of the student body is Hispanic, according to the Institutional Effectiveness.
Adilene Vega, a senior art history major, had concerns about the removal of the history classes from the minor, which she said are “a very necessary aspect of it.”
“Art is always born from its historical context,” said Vega, co-president of the Latino Alliance. “Especially the U.S. involvement in the levels of imperialism in space, which is everything you need to learn in a history class; it can be very dangerous to ignore those stories.”
Sabatés said he is confident in the minor’s new requirements.
“Some of these changes sometimes are maybe too much novelty at once,” he said. “But I think, strictly speaking about the structure of the minor, I think it’s a very good minor.”
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