Campaign to Save the Africana Studies and Research Center: March 2011

This evening members of the Africana Studies and Research Center and Save Africana Committee traveled down the hill to bring the issues Africana is facing to the greater Ithaca community! Big thanks to the Greater Ithaca Activities Center (GIAC) for hosting this important event. The meeting was packed full with leaders, lifetime and longtime residents, and ASRC alums who live in Ithaca. We used the forum to generate ideas for collaborating with other local political and racial justice movements in Tompkins County. Please stay tuned for video footage covering the event!

Representatives from the Save Africana Committee bringing information to Ithaca residents

AS&RC Alumna and current History PhD candidate Candace Katungi describes her reaction to the Provost's unilateral decision to restructure the AS&RC

AS&RC Graduate Student Alyssa Clutterbuck debunks the myths the administration has been using to justify their autocratic decision

Ithaca resident and SAC member Greg Rothman invites members of the greater Ithaca community to join in the struggle to save the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell

Undergraduate and SAC Member Kristin Herbeck describes several upcoming actions and ways to get involved in the struggle.

AS&RC Founder and longtime faculty member Dr. James Turner warns the community about the implications of the Provost's decisions for other Ethnic Studies programs at Cornell and across the country

Alyssa Clutterbuck fields questions from the Ithaca community

David J. Skorton

President Cornell University
Office of the President
300 Day Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853

Dear President Skorton,

I write in my capacity as President of the National Council for Black Studies, the discipline's oldest and largest professional organization. For more than three decades, we have been... engaged directly in the professionalization of the discipline through undergraduate and graduate curricular development, site visits and program reviews, sponsoring foundation funded workshops for new unit administrators, junior faculty, and graduate students. In addition, occasionally, we have engaged university administrators on behalf of local campus members and the national Black/African Studies community.

In March of the 2011, at our 35th annual meeting, the National Council for Black Studies (NCBS) will honor Dr. James Turner for his seminal service to the discipline of Black/Africana Studies. We will honor Dr. Turner because he has embodied the highest value of our discipline—he is a scholar-activist that contributes to our discipline's intellectual and social missions. He has helped chart the direction of Black/Africana Studies for forty years. With the faculty, Dr. Turner guided the Africana Studies and Research Center to stellar national and international reputations. We will honor Dr. Turner for his scholarship, national and international engagement in social justice policy, and perhaps most of all for his role as an institution-builder.

In large part due to Dr. Turner's vision, the Africana Studies Research Center has been not just a contributor, but also a model for the discipline. The ASRC's prominence in and importance to the discipline has much to do with its institutional arrangement. The current arrangement-reporting and funding directly to the Provost office-has contributed mightily to ASRC's ability to attract and tenure an outstanding faculty and produce several cohorts of undergraduate and graduate students. A rather large number of ASRC graduates have gone on to receive the PhD or professional degrees or to assume important positions in public education or business and social service. Moreover, several graduates have had a tremendous impact on Black/Africana Studies, as well as the professions of law, and several other other disciplines. Some of ASRC's more prominent graduates include Kenneth A. McClane, critical race legal scholar, Kimberley Crenshaw, award-winning novelist Ernest Hill, literary scholar, former Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee leader, James Forman, and professors Kwesi Konadu, Tamara Beauboeuf Lafontant, Ayele Bekerie, Scot Brown and Leslie Alexander.

Tales of bitter hiring and tenure battles between Africana/Black Studies units in colleges of arts and sciences have achieved an apocryphal status. Because of its institutional architecture, ASRC has largely evaded the debilitating hiring and tenure battles endemic to Africana/Black Studies departments located in liberal arts colleges, especially those with joint appointment positions. Thus, it is curious that Provost Fuchs proposed downgrade of ASRC would engross it in precisely the type of entanglements that have proven a daunting challenge at most institutions.

Perhaps the three most troubling aspects of Provost Fuchs decision are its abrogation of faculty governance, its inability to envision Black/Africana Studies as an academic discipline, and its subjugation of ASRC's interests to those of other units. As suggested by his December 2, 2010 statement in the Cornell Daily Sun, Provost Fuchs apparently, without prior consultation with ASRC's faculty determined to relocate the center under the College of Arts and Sciences. Without input from the center's faculty one wonders if and to what extent Provost Fuchs incorporated information on how ASRC's institutional arrangement contributed to its success. Provost Fuchs statement masks what appears to be an inability to view Africana/Black Studies as an autonomous academic discipline. Perhaps unbeknown to him, his reference of the programs at Harvard and Yale is viewed quite ominously by the national Africana/Black Studies community. At this point neither Harvard's or Yale's programs have the capacity to hire and tenure without the approval of another department. Nor do they grant an independent PhD; they offer what is actually either a graduate concentration or a dual degree. Be definition, these colonial arrangements deny the intellectual integrity of the discipline of Black/Africana Studies. Thus, it is not surprisingly that Provost Fuchs's decision has again shined an unflatteringly light on Cornell's racial practices and made it the subject of another national campaign against racial discrimination. Can one imagine a history, sociology or a literature department that would be largely constrained to hire or tenure in conjunction with another unit?

Related to the issues of faculty governance and disciplinary autonomy is the question of the role Provost Fuchs envisions ASRC playing inside the College of Arts and Sciences. Despite the "offer" of a PhD program, it appears that a major rationale for moving ASRC into the College of Arts and Sciences is to accommodate the college's and other units' "interest" in Black/Africana Studies. Often the "interest" of other academic units is not in Black/Africana Studies or one of its subfields but in accommodating the university's need to racially diversify its faculty. In these situations, campus administrations treat Africana/Black Studies not as an academic unit, but as the main vehicle for achieving administration's diversification objects. Racial diversity is obviously a goal we share, nevertheless, the traditional disciplines should be induced to fulfill racial diversification without dependence on joint appointments with Black/Africana Studies.

However, even when other units' "interest" is intellectual-a sincere desire to develop an Africana-focused field within their discipline history suggests they prefer to do so without using their own resources. Caught in the crossfire, deans of arts and sciences often become the arbiters of these disputes. Yet, the record on hiring and tenure disputes between Black/Africana Studies units and traditional departments reveals that historically they have been decided in the interest of the traditional unit. Thus, one of the inequalities, in institutional arrangements like Harvard's and Yale's is that usually for at most half the investment, traditional disciplines gain veto power, in effect control over hiring and tenure decisions in joint appointments with Black/Africana Studies. These arrangements have often encumbered Black/Africana studies units with their second or third choice, as traditional departments pursue the candidate that best meets their disciplinary conventions. These logics privilege scholars that study Black people rather than Black/Africana Studies scholars. By relocating ASRC into the College of Arts and Sciences, Provost Fuchs is subjecting it to the dominant logic of joint appointments between Black/Africana Studies units and the traditional disciplines. To be blunt, he is creating a scenario in which ASRC will be subjugated to the "interests" of other academic units.

As we prepare for what should be the celebration of a life and career of one of our discipline's pioneers, we fear the event will be bittersweet. We in the National Council for Black Studies, like the Black/Africana Studies community across the country are quite distressed over Provost Kent Fuchs arbitrary decision to abolish an important aspect of Dr. Turner's the life's work, the Africana Studies Research Center. I must say, when I first heard of Provost Fuchs intention to abolish an institutional arrangement that has been highly successful for 40 years, I could not help but think of Arizona State Superintendent Thomas Horne and that state legislature's passage of HB2281, the anti-ethnic studies act. I suspect, you are recoiling from that comparison; however, I can assure you it is one that is being made throughout the national Black/Africana Studies community. The two decisions are united by both Horne's and Fuchs's rejection of "Mexican American Studies" and "Black/Africana Studies" as intellectual areas and their denial of decades of success in favor of subordinating these units to allegedly "broader and better" initiatives.

This is a critical moment for Cornell University. This situation plus the Grant Farred controversy has catapulted Cornell into the frontlines of racially challenged institutions. President Skorton, you have an opportunity to reverse the descent of your institution. We in the National Council for Black Studies trust that you will act to restore a highly successful institutional arrangement that has made Cornell one of the premier institutions in Black/Africana Studies.

Sincerely,

Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua,
President of the National Council for Black StudiesSee More