Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies - Ford Foundation

Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies in the United States 219
tent to which African American Studies faculty carry inordinate teaching,
mentoring, and administrative roles at most schools. (Suffice it to say that
they are usually not rewarded accordingly.) Overwork is related to joint appointments;
significant graduate degree supervision (or the recent addition
of graduate programs to an already busy faculty and administrative overload)
and administrative staffing problems associated with small, and
often, shrinking budgets. The size of most of the units is fairly small, which
makes a loss of even a single faculty member—through an outside offer, retirement,
or movement to another unit within the university—highly
destabilizing. As of 1997–98, many of the units hold tenured or tenuretrack
faculty of twelve or fewer. Harvard has seven, Indiana twelve, Berkeley
ten, and Wisconsin fifteen. Only UCLA had a faculty as sizable as twenty.
Although these individuals are affiliated with the Center for African American
Studies, their institutional homes are in other university units (usually,
other departments). CAAS “owns” only six FTE, and the Afro-American
Studies degree program at UCLA has only recently been authorized to participate
in joint appointments.
It is also crucial to grasp the wide range of environments in which these
departments and centers function. Berkeley’s African American Studies department
is one of the more complex institutional settings. It holds departmental
status and coexists with a Center for African Studies and an Ethnic
Studies department, which contains subfields in Asian American, Native
American, and Chicano Studies. Berkeley has recently added a new American
Studies program,which has depended uponAfricanAmerican Studies faculty
and course offerings without, it appears, contributing additional resources to
the department. In contrast, at Harvard, the Afro-American Studies department’s
faculty are jointly appointed. Furthermore, there exist two competing
Ethnic Studies units on campus withAfrican Studies holding subordinate status
as a committee administered by faculty who are generally affiliated with
African American Studies. With such complexities as these, it is not unimaginable
that some African American Studies units might wither away from lack
of aggressive, committed leadership or from a lack of faculty willing to make
the professional sacrifices necessary to keep such units functioning.