Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies - Ford Foundation

192 Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies in the United States
mounted ninety-seven courses with a total enrollment of 2,533. In early
1998, there were forty-three African American Studies undergraduate majors,
and the first two cohorts in the new Ph.D. program brought in twenty
graduate students. This is not to mention the Ph.D. students in Ethnic
Studies and other departments, many of whom work with faculty in
African American Studies. (The proposal for the department’s Ph.D. Program
estimated that there would be approximately fifty students enrolled
by the year 2000, assuming that ten students were admitted annually.) That
the department’s faculty members carry more than their fair share of administrative
demands (as occurs at a number of campuses) only exacerbates
the crisis.
In addition to workload, there is a lack of sufficient FTE in African
American Studies. Between 1992 and 1998, four faculty were added to the
department. In 1998–99, the unit held six full professors, two associate professors,
two assistant professors, and two lecturers. Not only is this number
(10 FTE) inadequate to handle the current teaching demands but it inevitably
leaves massive gaps in the curriculum that are not consistently covered
by faculty in other departments. Perhaps the two most dramatic
examples are the absence of a specialist in Caribbean history and a West
Africanist. This latter absence is especially striking, indeed. As of early 1998,
Berkeley did not have a single regular faculty member who specialized in
West Africa, regardless of field. The department also lacks a senior faculty
member in African American history, one of the more volatile and interesting
areas in African American Studies, and one populated by a sizable pool
of scholars. The consequences of this staffing problem on both the undergraduate
and graduate curricula in African American Studies are obvious.
(The department’s hiring priorities include these other fields: History of
Science, Communications, Ethnomusicology, Social Theory, Psychology,
Film, and Linguistics.) That the unit must compete for FTEs with larger departments
within a division (Social Sciences) already strapped for faculty
resources suggests that the problem will not find an easy solution.
As African American Studies faculty members have achieved senior
status at Berkeley and in their careers, they are called on to carry additional
responsibilities both within and without the university. For example, Mar-