Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies - Ford Foundation

Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies in the United States 177
seminars sponsored by the Committee on African Studies, and present a
paper in the Du Bois Institute’s colloquia series.
Ford funds were also designated to “support the expansion of an existing
Internet listserv group for scholars and students conducting research
on African and African American-Studies.” This listserv—AFROAM-L—
has been located at the Du Bois Institute since 1992 and has been moderated
by Lee Baker, a former predoctoral fellow at the Institute. The Ford
grant was intended to facilitate the growth of this listserv through supporting
outreach efforts designed to encourage more scholars to subscribe.
The approach taken in conceptualizing and executing the Harvard
grant centered on exploiting programs already in place, most notably, by
both expanding the well-established Du Bois Institute postdoctoral fellows
program and taking advantage of the strength of the Afro-American Studies
department. Although there exists a Committee on African Studies at
Harvard, the Afro-American Studies department provides the bulk of the
“African-related event” at the university. (Note that Kwame Anthony Appiah,
head of the African Studies Committee, is on the Afro-American
Studies faculty.) Much of this situation results from the fact that, at Harvard,
departments constitute the dominant institutional entities. As explained
in the Du Bois Institute’s proposal, “The Committee is a
multidisciplinary group of scholars appointed to coordinate teaching and
research on Africa within Harvard’s departments and faculties.” Practically
speaking, the committees appear to be units with little power or budgetary
authority and no control of the tenuring and promotion of faculty, and the
low organizational standing of committees at Harvard reveals a great deal
about the status of African Studies there. (As one faculty member noted,
Harvard did not offer its first class in an African language until 1998.)
Given that this distribution of institutional power is not likely to
change in the near future, it indeed makes sense to strengthen African Studies
on campus by providing additional resources to an already relatively resource-rich
unit, the Afro-American Studies department.
Although the review team was able to interview only one of the
Africanist scholars who have received these fellowships, the project appears
to have achieved its somewhat modest goals. The individuals brought to