Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies - Ford Foundation
Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies - Ford Foundation
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