Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies - Ford Foundation

xviii Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies in the United States
Ford Foundation was completed in 2000. In tandem with the field it surveys,
the Pinderhughes-Yarborough report warns about serious challenges
threatening its stability. The authors observe “a whole-scale brutal assault
both on the goal of increasing educational access through such mechanisms
as affirmative action and also on the most obvious institutional signs
of that hard won access, Ethnic Studies.”
Against this backdrop, the Pinderhughes-Yarborough report revisits
institutions considered in the O’Meally-Smith study, evaluates the field at
the turn of the 21st century, and offers suggestions on how best to help
strengthen and sustain the discipline.
The Response: Grantmaking in African American
Studies by the Ford Foundation
Since the first Ford grants to the field of African American Studies in 1969,
the field of African American Studies has grown and matured from idea to
movement to a thriving intellectual field in the academy. It is an institutionalized
part of the academic structure, replete with degree-granting departments
and programs, refereed publications, tenured professorships, and
endowed chairs.
Starting in 1969 through the next decade, Program Officer James
Scanlon’s initial grants to HBCUs and fledgling Black Studies departments
in predominately White institutions helped institutionalize the field.
From 1983–1987, program officer Sheila Biddle made grants totaling
$1.2 million to Cornell University, Harvard University (the Du Bois Institute),
and the University of Virginia (the Carter G. Woodson Institute). At
Cornell and Harvard, the grants supported visiting scholars programs; at
Woodson, predoctoral and postdoctoral fellowships.