Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies - Ford Foundation

Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies in the United States 37
spite the forceful opposition of Henry Rosovsky, Martin Kilson, and others,
the faculty voted for the changes the students demanded. It was a bitter decision,asweremanythefacultymadeinthedaysfollowing.Onecouldhardly
expectanAfro-Americanstudiesdepartment,thuscreated,tohavethewarm
support from administration and faculty that the Yale program enjoyed. 20
Wesleyan University
Until 1967, the number of Black undergraduates at Wesleyan had been negligible.
After that year, the numbers grew significantly. The change in racial composition
resulted in serious and disturbing friction between White and Black
students in the fall and winter of 1969. In December 1969, the Ujamaa Society
(the Black student group) had to be restrained by court order from disrupting
campus student events that the Black students considered“White”and thus unrelated
to the needs of Black students. At Wesleyan, as at Cornell, the threat of
violence was real. To meet the demands of Ujamaa, Malcolm X House was established
as a Black cultural center and as a center for Afro-American studies.
As we shall see, the program that emerged was confused in academic purpose.
Few academic institutions in the country had experiences as dramatic
as Cornell’s or Wesleyan’s, but all with sizable numbers of Black undergraduates
faced similar demands for reform. Keeping peace on campus was
everywhere a principal concern of faculty and administrators. Black students
everywhere were making similar demands. These included: (1) increased
recruitment of Black students; (2) increased financial aid and
special support for remedial needs; (3) an increased number of Black faculty
and advisers; (4) courses “relevant” to Black and/or Third World peoples;
(5) a Black Studies program (or department); (6) a Black or Third
World cultural center; (7) course credit or a program for community work.
All of these items did not have the same weight everywhere, and institutions
responded to them variously. It is important to recognize, however, that
Black Studies was only one item in a package. It was not always the most
important item to students, and it was not always feasible to implement.
The most difficult problem for all northern institutions was to find
qualified (or even marginally qualified) Black scholars. In 1970, a Ford