Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies - Ford Foundation

206 Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies in the United States
school teachers. Additional extramural moneys supported other CSBLAC
initiatives including predoctoral fellowships (via funds from Rockefeller
and Kodak) and the Richard Wright Lecture Series named for the celebrated
African American author (via funds from the William Penn Foundation).
As of 2000, the Center appears to be in a period of transition. Not only
has outside funding shrunk, but also Houston Baker (CSBLAC’s founder
and a major figure in African American Studies at Penn for years) has recently
relocated to Duke. During our review, Professor Baker was on leave;
English professor Michael Awkward was Acting Director of CSBLAC.
It is critical at this time that the University of Pennsylvania reaffirm its
support for both the Center and the (poorly funded) Afro-American Studies
Program. Under the leadership of President Judith Rodin, Penn has embarked
on a multimillion-dollar development initiative with the goal of assuring“minority
permanence” at the university. Given the involvement of the Afro-
American Studies Program in undergraduate student support—most notably
through a summer institute for “pre-freshmen”—in order to achieve this ambitious
end,the administration would be well-served to draw upon the expertise
of both the CSBLAC and the AAS Program; in turn, it should provide both
units with additional resources. Another potentially fruitful sign has been the
generation of a proposal to develop a graduate unit in Afro-American and
American Cultural Studies in CSBLAC.Finally,there has been some discussion
of creating a Ph.D. program that would draw upon the strengths of both Afro-
AmericanStudiesandAfricanStudiesattheuniversity.Inordertoexploitthese
opportunities, CSBLAC and the Afro-American Studies program will have to
continue their history of close collaboration. The weighing in of other related
units—the African Studies Program and the Du Bois Collective, a faculty research
group—could prove useful.
University of Virginia
The Project
The Carter G. Woodson Institute for Afro-American and African Studies at
the University of Virginia (UVa) has been reinvigorated and reconceptual-