Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies - Ford Foundation

198 Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies in the United States
“Rhapsodies in Blax: The Blaxploitation Movement and the Harlem Renaissance”
in conjunction with an exhibition on the Harlem Renaissance at
the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It has worked with KAOS Network,
a Los Angeles broadcaster and corporate sponsor of a program that
exposes urban youth to computer and advanced media technology. This
project reflected the importance of Cultural Studies in the humanities, and
the growing interest in specific cultural innovation within Black communities
while reaching out for a broader understanding of forces shaping
communities of African descent transnationally. Research was explored in
twenty-five different topics including gender and identity, immigration,
youth, culture, and foodways.
The Center for African American Studies at the University of
California Los Angeles
Founded in 1969, the Center for African American Studies (CAAS) 19 is one
of the leading research units in the field in the nation. It has an elaborate
administrative structure with significant support from the University and
has the capacity to raise considerable external support through research
and development activities. CAAS has also made productive use of the creation,
in 1972, of the Institute of American Cultures, which “promotes the
development of Ethnic Studies at UCLA by providing a structure for coordination
of the four Ethnic Studies centers on campus.” 20
The University has continued to support CAAS evolution and development,
and the Center has reached the point where departmental status is at
least a possibility.Its research,faculty,and curriculum at the graduate and undergraduate
levels are clearly among the strongest in the nation. At the same
time, however, it contends with ongoing problems related to leadership of the
Center, faculty stability, and the intellectual, political, and administrative demands
associated with managing such a complex academic enterprise. The
political issues surrounding attacks on affirmative action within the state of
California by one of the University’s own Regents,Ward Connerly, an African
American businessman,poses perhaps the most serious threat in reducing the
size of the African American student population attending the University.