Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies - Ford Foundation

Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies in the United States 141
Again, our lack of negative commentary is not because we wish to
perpetrate a whitewash; that would serve no one’s purposes. Rather, our
general assessment is that these grants represented very careful advance
thinking and excellent execution by truly outstanding professionals. In
other words, as hard as we looked for trouble, we found virtually nothing
worth reporting. These grants worked.
Site Visits and Observations
Cornell University
Ford’s grant to Cornell was to bring visiting scholars to the Africana Studies
and Research Center, three visitors a year over a three-year period. Over
the span of the grant, and for two years beyond it, Cornell would undertake
to hire three new faculty members in Africana Studies. Cornell’s larger motive
vis-à-vis Black Studies has been to assist an academic program and research
center in the process of reinvigoration. These three goals stand out:
1. To strengthen the quality of the faculty;
2. To increase the emphasis on research and writing in the field; and
3. To help Africana studies establish and nurture linkages to other academic
units within the university community and beyond the university’s
walls.
Simply put, Cornell’s program has suffered from its isolation from the
rest of the campus and from its failure to attract and retain research scholars
at the highest levels. Ford’s grant was designed to help Cornell confront
these difficult problems as it prepared for a new decade and a new century.
Cornell’s Ford programs were conspicuously successful.The professors
we met—Professors Rae Banks and N’Dri Thérèse Assie-Lumumba—are
both excellent scholars who have served the Center’s missions exceedingly
well. Banks and Assie-Lumumba sounded chords heard throughout our
travels: the grant rescued them from the drudgery of day-in/day-out teaching,
gave them time to write, and provided access to superb research facili-