Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies - Ford Foundation

xiv Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies in the United States
and experiential bases for the demand that Blacks develop Black Studies.”
He goes on to suggest that the foundation support “at least two institutions
where the central thrust is the development by Black scholars of the definition,
the content, and the development of standards for academic excellence
in the field of Black Studies.”
While McGeorge Bundy sought the advice of foundation officers, he
also solicited the advice of Sir Arthur Lewis, the Caribbean-born economist
from Princeton University. Lewis won the Nobel Prize in Economics in
1979 for his “pioneering research into economic development research
with particular consideration of the problems of developing countries.” At
the request of Bundy, Lewis reviewed the first set of grants and wrote an informal
position paper on the emerging field. “Notes on Black Studies”
(1969) appears to have influenced the foundation’s grant making for years
after the first grants to establish African American Studies programs.
The author encourages the foundation to focus its attention on helping
to build a strong academic field by supporting scholarly and pedagogical
initiatives that adhere to the standards of traditional disciplines. The
more nationalist programs were to be avoided and White students encouraged
to take courses in Black Studies. “The foundation should presumably
support only programs intended for both Black and White students.” Even
though Lewis recognized the importance of addressing the academic needs
of undergraduate students, he noted that there was, and would continue to
be, a shortage of professors trained to teach in the newly developing field.
To address this issue, he encouraged the foundation to shift its focus to
graduate programs and the training of future scholars and teachers.“Those
who care for Black students and Black Studies should support only genuine
intellectual inquiry, of the kind which the militants do not want.”
According to Lewis, such programs would outlast “political fads” and
would stimulate institutions to provide continued support for them. Indeed,
Lewis’s document maps the philosophical route the foundation traversed
for the next 30 years.
Starting in 1969 and throughout the next decade, Ford Foundation
program officer James Scanlon would make a number of grants to help
sustain African American Studies programs that met Lewis’s criteria at