Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies - Ford Foundation

Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies in the United States 163
group of administrators of African American Studies programs to be convened
by the Ford Foundation and they encourage the foundation to continue
the following approaches:
1. Nurture African American Studies as a field of scholarship.
2. Build African American Studies institutionally.
3. Stimulate the pipeline supplying African Americans to the academic
profession.
4. Educate administrators and development officers regarding the
needs and institutional value of African American Studies by convening
a meeting of university development officers with major
African American Studies units to discuss fundraising. Such a gathering
would assist the universities in locating funding sources that
would help the programs become more self-sustaining.
Finally, Pinderhughes and Yarborough concede the future of African
American Studies as “hazy except for the most highly publicized” programs.
They cite a need for leadership development and a need to relieve
Black faculty of their inordinate nonscholarly responsibilities. But most
important, they continue:
What appears to be desperately needed at both the national and local
levels is sustained and open conversation regarding the growing number of
advanced degree programs in African American Studies. At present there
has been no real attempt to keep track of such programs and more importantly
there is no clearing house of information such as course syllabi, curriculum
design, and program proposals through which schools might learn
from each other’s experiences.
The authors called upon the foundation to convene a meeting of the
heads of African American Studies graduate programs for a discussion of
goals and strategies for dealing with student financial aid, collaboration
with other departments on campus, curricula, introductory courses, job
placement, and research planning.