Among the most crucial economic cutbacks were those directed at the minimal gains Asians, Blacks, Chicanos, and Native American communities had attained in an intensive ten-year struggle for education, particularly the Ethnic Studies programs. Consisting of three panels, the symposium critically examined the common base that Ethnic Studies programs share among themselves. The first panel led off the symposium with a series of critical overviews regarding the methodological parameters of Ethnic Studies. The discussion evolved along the general themes of the relationship of Ethnic Studies to other disciplines (e.g., sociology or Marxist Studies) and to those communities they presumably represent, the role of Ethnic scholarship as a vehicle of revolutionary change, and the contributory position imposed on Ethnic Studies by the university vis-a-vis ideological criteria. The second panel addressed and delineated the politics of Ethnic Studies and policy making in higher education; and in so doing, placed the development of these academic units in a larger context of the dialects of the university and U.S. society. The third panel's discussion centered on the following themes: the relationship between the political economy of higher education and the development of Ethnic Studies; the dialectics of class and race relations in higher education; Ethnic Studies as class struggle; higher education and the labor market; and Marxism/Cultural nationalism and the Third World Student. (Author/NQ)