Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies - Ford Foundation

Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies in the United States 225
and African American Studies.” This consortium grew out of the Fordfunded
Chesapeake Seminar of 1997–99, which attracted faculty from
HBCUs in the Chesapeake region. At Cornell, the ASRC’s Ford project linking
upstate New York–based consortium with Baltimore’s Morgan State
University, was particularly impressive for its use of teleconferencing, distance-learning
technology, and its onsite “common seminar.”
The relationship between the institutionalization of African American
Studies and the diversifying of faculty at schools where such units exist
is a complex one—particularly with the diminished commitment to ethnic
diversity at all levels at a number of major universities and colleges. The
building of African American Studies units in the late 1960s and early 1970s
created a mechanism, a highly strategic one, for adding blacks to college
faculties that had long been segregated by race and also by gender.Although
some of these African American Studies units are now celebrating their
25th and 30th anniversaries, this approach to diversifying faculties has a
mixed record in recruitment, retention, and promotion of Black professors.
We see a high point of sorts on this front in the early and mid-1980s, when
many schools earmarking funds for the hiring of African American faculty
members. The effectiveness of this strategy depended upon an institutional
commitment to what came to be known as “Target of Opportunity” appointments.
Unfortunately, such appointments too often became the only
way in which departments would hire individuals from underrepresented
racial and ethnic groups (and in some cases, women). Over the past decade,
the faltering interest in building an ethnically diverse faculty has been reflected
by the drying up of Target of Opportunity funds or, at some institutions,
by the use of such moneys to support spousal hires or the
appointment of white males in particularly desirable specialization.
Arelatedissueinvolvesthedecisionaunitmustmakeaboutpursuingjunior
versus senior faculty appointments inAfricanAmerican Studies.On the one
hand, hiring at the junior level is risky for a number of reasons, the most obvious
of which is thatittakesatleastsix yearsbefore the facultymember is tenured
(if he or she is promoted at all) and thus becomes a stable factor in the curriculum
and research agenda of the unit. This process is both time-consuming and