Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies - Ford Foundation

Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies in the United States 199
CAAS is an Organized Research Unit (ORU) under the U.C. system.
It includes a number of other units across a range of academic fields in addition
to Ethnic Studies. Such ORUs normally have a fifteen-year life span
after which they are subject to administrative review and renewal. The Ethnic
Studies centers were, however, not reviewed after their first fifteen years
of operation; they will be reviewed in the fall of 2000. 21 CAAS and the other
Ethnic Studies ORUs (Asian American, American Indian, and Chicano
Studies) report to the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs—currently
Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, a former Director of the Center.
There are also interdisciplinary degree programs (IDPs) that overlap
and interact with the ORUs, but they report to a different administrative
structure. The IDP known as the Afro-American Studies Program directs
an undergraduate major with a required concentration in Anthropology,
Economics, English, History, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, or
Sociology and a master’s program in the same disciplines with the exception
of Economics. Some students elect to double major in the undergraduate
program, combining Afro-American Studies with another field. The
IDP has set up a pilot coordinated degree program linking the M.A. in
Afro-American Studies with the graduate program in the School of Education.
A similar arrangement with the School of Law is being explored.
CAAS (the ORU) reports to Vice Chancellor Mitchell-Kernan, and
the Afro-American Studies Program (the IDP) reports to the Dean of the
Social Sciences, Scott Waugh, in the College of Letters and Sciences, an
arrangement which creates interesting tensions and challenges. The Area
Studies programs have recently been shifted to the College of Letters and
Sciences and will report directly to the Provost (the head of the College).
Yarborough also reports that“the possibility of departmentalization is even
on the table for the centers, something that would not likely have happened
five years ago.”
As of 2000, Mitchell-Kernan will no longer serve as Vice Chancellor
but will retain her position as Dean of the Graduate Division; 22 the positions
had previously been held by two different individuals. Acting Director
Yarborough notes that the centers have been asked to decide where within
the university infrastructure they should be located—for example, the