Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies - Ford Foundation

36 Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies in the United States
1968. The historian Frank Friedel had organized a successful course on the
Afro-American experience. 18 A student-faculty committee under the chairmanship
of Henry Rosovsky 19 was organized to report on a wide range of
issues related to Afro-American student life and needs at Harvard.The committee
made its report to the faculty in January 1969, recommending a program
in Afro-American studies (one similar to that later adopted by Yale),
increased graduate fellowships for Black students, and a variety of measures
to enhance Black student life on campus. The student members of the
Rosovsky committee were unable to win for the report the general approval
of Harvard’s Black students. Nevertheless, the report was adopted by the
faculty in February and a committee was established to implement it.
In just two months, however, everything had changed. On April 9, in
a totally unrelated matter, student members of Students for a Democratic
Society (SDS) and the Progressive Labor Party occupied University Hall demanding
the banning of ROTC from the Harvard campus, the university’s
active commitment to ending the war in Vietnam, and amnesty for certain
students who were under disciplinary terms from a previous demonstration.
(In all, there were nine “non-negotiable demands,” most without lasting
significance.) The protesters at University Hall were mainly White
students and the “sit-in” had nothing to do with Black Studies, but the dramatic
outcome of this demonstration was to radically change the context
in which discussion of all reforms was to take place. It was a new ball game.
The police were called to force the eviction of the demonstrators and
a general strike by students followed. The faculty met in the ensuing weeks
to deal with a range of issues flowing from those student protests. There was
justifiable concern among administrators, faculty, and students that the
university could be shut down or forced to operate under a state of siege.
The leadership of the Association of African and Afro-American Students,
becoming more militant (or more emboldened by the crisis atmosphere),
presented the faculty with new demands framed as a thinly veiled
ultimatum. They wanted Afro-American studies to be a department on its
own and not a program,and they wanted a student voice in the selection and
appointment of its faculty. On April 22, the faculty were asked to vote on
these propositions without altering them.Although deeply divided, and de-