The Orange County Department of Education (OCDE) held an ethnic studies colloquium hosted by district superintendent Al Mijares July 21, less than a week before the Orange County Board of Education (OCBE) is scheduled to hold a similar forum. OCDE’s discussion, titled “With Liberty and Justice for All: A Colloquium on Ethnic Studies,” featured eight speakers, including four Orange County superintendents, whose districts either have ethnic studies courses, or plan to offer them. “I think we heard a lot of rhetoric … that really did not get into details,” Ken Williams, vice president of OCBE, told The Epoch Times. “This is a very divisive issue. Mijares tried to deflect that there’s a lot of misinformation out there. Well, his forum was misinformation because it didn’t present the entire perspective of what’s going on there in ethnic studies.” Ethnic studies is an optional course that studies race and ethnicity in the United States, with an emphasis on the experiences of people …