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Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies - Ford Foundation

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<strong>Inclusive</strong> <strong>Scholarship</strong>: <strong>Developing</strong> <strong>Black</strong> <strong>Studies</strong> in the United States 193<br />

garet Wilkerson—former Chair of both the Theatre and the African American<br />

<strong>Studies</strong> departments and Director of the Center for the Study, Education,<br />

and Advancement of Women—is now on a leave as a Program<br />

Director with the <strong>Ford</strong> <strong>Foundation</strong>. 17 In addition, Charles Henry is on leave<br />

from the department while he works with the Chancellor to develop faculty<br />

hiring and student recruitment programs. Both of these individuals<br />

have played key leaderships roles in African American <strong>Studies</strong> over the past<br />

decade or two. (Earl Lewis’s move from Berkeley to Michigan in the early<br />

1990s constituted a major loss as well.)<br />

Indeed, with the inevitable faculty departures, leaves, and retirements,<br />

African American <strong>Studies</strong> could find itself in the near future in an even<br />

more desperate situation. The administration’s reluctance to allocate additional<br />

FTEs to the department after faculty have retired, as well as the recent<br />

migration of a faculty member from African American <strong>Studies</strong> (on<br />

whose FTE she was hired), to English, with apparently no compensation<br />

provided in return, point up a lack of institutional support for the unit that<br />

must change if the department is to survive, much less thrive. That the university<br />

faculty has been limited to a fixed size for some time means that<br />

growth in any one department requires the subtraction of faculty from another<br />

unit. When tenured faculty retire, their FTEs frequently return to the<br />

university’s Senate Budget Committee, which makes recommendations to<br />

the Vice Chancellor about where to allocate these resources. This practice<br />

only worsens the staffing problems faced by African American <strong>Studies</strong>.<br />

Not surprisingly, some of the concerns voiced by African American<br />

graduate students in interviews conducted as part of this review reflect anxiety<br />

about these staffing problems. Specifically, students bemoaned the absence<br />

of specialists in both African and African American History; some<br />

anticipated problems fulfilling core course requirements in light of the faculty<br />

shortage. Particularly frustrating for a few students were the institutional<br />

barriers that prevented their taking advantage of relevant faculty<br />

resources in other departments. For example, the English department had<br />

just recently brought in a distinguished visiting scholar to teach a graduate<br />

seminar. Because doctoral studies in African American <strong>Studies</strong> were not<br />

members of the department sponsoring this professor’s course, they felt

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