Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies - Ford Foundation

Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies in the United States 31
tion only supported the belief that standards were being lowered to admit
Black students who were bound either to fail or to undermine the quality
of education. The new Black assertiveness could only antagonize those who
held to the ideal of integration and of a color-blind system of merit. Black
students were, in their view, racists who merely wanted to turn an evil on
its head. Antagonism over these issues set the tone for the debate over Black
Studies when it became a central issue, and it also affected the reception of
these programs when they were established by the end of the decade.
Forthemostpart,negotiationswentquietly.CollegeslikeBowdoin,Carleton,
Macalester, and Dartmouth, removed from crosscurrents of student
radicalism, were able to move at their own pace to increase Black enrollment,
appoint Black faculty and staff,and introduce a few courses on topics of interest
to Afro-Americans. 14 In some conspicuous instances, however (Cornell,
San Francisco State,Wesleyan),the students armed themselves,and the threat
of riot and violence was quite real.At other institutions, calls for Black Studies
courses and programs merely added to a general atmosphere of conflict and
upheaval.Tothemostvociferousactivists,Afro-Americanacademicprograms
were likely to be of incidental or secondary importance; what they were really
interested in was not an academic but a political revolution.
San Francisco State University
On September 29, 1968, the trustees of the California State College System
voted 85 to 5 to fire one G. M. Murray from his post as an untenured lecturer
at San Francisco State College. Murray, a member of the Black Panthers, had
been hired as part of an attempt to increase Black faculty; he had been teaching
courses that were, according to Murray, “related to revolution.” The firing
set in motion a series of shocks to the campus, including student strikes,
violence from civilians and police, the closing of the school, and the final enforcement
of order under the newly appointed president, S. I. Hayakawa.
The institution came as close to anarchy as one could possibly imagine,
with college faculty and students, the mayor and citizens of San Francisco,
Governor Ronald Reagan, and President Hayakawa engaged in strategies
alternating between charges, threats, demands, the use of violence, naked