Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies - Ford Foundation

Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies in the United States 131
At Harvard, for example, the Visiting Scholars Program now calls for
such scholars to not only pursue their own research, but teach one course per
year. In this way, students are exposed to areas that otherwise are not taught
there while visiting faculty receive much needed time to complete their research
projects.Visiting scholars at Cornell are likewise able to take advantage
of superior research facilities and contribute to the ongoing life of the University.And
at Penn,the Center for the Study of Black Life and Culture (CSBLAC)
has sponsored summer seminars in Black Studies for professors in the northeast
region. This program has had an impact on the work of scholars at Penn
and those at nearby colleges, universities, and secondary schools.
Graduate students at Wisconsin repeatedly express the impact that
various Ford-sponsored conferences have had on their development; the
students report their delight at having heard the conferees’ broad range of
perspectives, to have met prominent scholars, to have participated in public
debates and in some instances, to have presented papers. Their counterparts
at Berkeley, Indiana, UCLA, Yale, and elsewhere were similarly
enthusiastic about the opportunities extended them to meet and exchange
ideas in such settings. So the broad goal of bringing new scholars into the
field, of keeping the pipeline moving, has been addressed by the present
round of grants with very positive results.
What is clearer than ever is that however successful may be the efforts
to enhance “‘the pipeline drama”—that vibrant process of inviting new
scholars into the field and of supporting them as they advance toward and
beyond tenure—other Black Studies scenarios must also be enhanced. Several
scholars we visited made the point that, if “phase one” of the contemporary
Black Studies struggle has been to assist the pipeline, then “phase
two” might very well focus on the need to give special support to scholars
involved in long-term projects designed to create the tools of research: the
tools that make the tools. Here the point is that African Americanists often
lack such building blocks of research as encyclopedias, concordances, critical
editions, special dictionaries, electronic databases, and other fundamental
reference materials. Lacking tools in such categories, too often our
scholars find themselves starting a project as if no one else ever worked on
anything like it before: reinventing wheels.