Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies - Ford Foundation

Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies in the United States 157
establish such programs—and then they begin to make their way as specialists.
At a time of drastic fiscal shrinkages, Ford has provided this new,
rising generation of African Americanists with money to travel to conferences
and sites of field research, as well as to engage in study and teaching.
Significantly, these newcomers do finish their dissertations; they do get jobs
in academia; they complete their research projects and against a treacherous
market, they earn tenure. The proof is in the journals, in the bookstores,
and on the mastheads of African American Studies programs at the
schools we visited. The next generation is coming on.
Beyond any question of sheer numbers, whether in classes or moving
through the pipeline, the quality of the African American Studies enterprise
as a whole is higher than ever before. This field attracts excellent students at
all levels: some who are serious about understanding their own cultural inheritances
and many who want to gain the perspectives of a growing area of
study that has had a profound impact throughout the academy. Effective
teaching over the years has made for this success. So, of course, have events in
the news that make clear the importance of multi-ethnic societies learning to
cope with their various cultures.African American Studies has been uniquely
well placed to offer insight into the meanings of “race” and “difference” and,
moreover, into the meanings of contemporary life in our global community.
A major ingredient in the field’s broad success has been the quality of
research and writing in African American Studies. Every school we visited
had on its faculty two or more scholars whose work has been important well
beyond the reaches of the African American Studies field itself. Required
reading across the disciplines in colleges and universities these days includes
the work of such well-known figures as Henry Louis Gates, Jr.,Arnold Rampersad,
Cornel West, and Nobel Laureate for Literature Toni Morrison; literary
theorists Houston Baker, Hazel Carby, and Hortense Spillers; and
historians Darlene Clark Hine, David Levering Lewis, and Nell Painter.
Such assigned readings as these are making a difference in what it means to
be literate as we approach the new century. Ford’s support of new research
by the pathfinders of African American Studies, their junior colleagues and
students, has helped to change the face of American higher education.