In this talk Kelley places the origins of UC San Diego’s Ethnic Studies program within a broader context of anti-racist student protests in the 1990s, the proliferation of new Ethnic Studies units from Columbia University to University of Colorado, etc. Although this was the height of liberal multiculturalism, it was also the era of NAFTA, Proposition 187, prison expansion, and policies that accelerated class and racial inequality. This period also marks the defeat of the Rainbow Coalition and Left internationalist politics of the 1980s, and the triumph of Clinton-era neoliberalism. Kelley will argue that what he’s calling Second Wave Ethnic Studies emerged in response to this latest neoliberal turn as an effort at multiracial coalition building and rethinking the identity politics of the 1960s. The period is rich with lessons for our contemporary crisis.