September 12, 2011
As alumni of the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University, we are deeply troubled by the most recent development regarding the Africana Center’s future. In a recent Cornell Chronicle article, Peter Lepage, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, announced his plans for the Africana Center to “flourish” at Cornell University. Beneath a camouflage of concern, this decree rests on blatant misinformation and a
reckless disregard for the integrity of Africana Studies and—by extension—the credibility of Cornell University as an institution of higher learning.
Over the past year, Provost Fuchs and Dean Lepage have repeatedly implemented unilateral mandates that are in direct opposition to the Africana Center’s best interest, and now the Center has, in effect, been placed in receivership. Cornell’s administrators have flagrantly violated even the most fundamental concepts of faculty governance. They have refused to acknowledge and to consider the national outcry and advocacy for the
inclusion of Africana faculty voices in the process of reconfiguring the Center’s relationship to the university. Instead of engaging in open and honest dialogue, Provost Fuchs, with the support of President Skorton and now Dean Lepage, have operated in a tyrannical and despotic manner—with a penchant for decree over dialogue. The authoritarian and destructive processes by which this restructuring plan has transpired evoked condemnation from members of the Africana faculty, the two leading professional organizations in the field (the National Council for Black Studies and the Association for the Study of African American Life and History), numerous alumni, students, the country’s leading Black intellectuals and more than 2,500 petitioners.
Furthermore, Provost Fuchs also refused to even meet with Africana Studies and Research Center alumni. This blatant disregard for the integrity of Africana Studies and its constituent community of scholars, activists and students raises serious questions about the credibility of the leadership at Cornell University. There was indeed widespread and diverse opposition to Provost Fuchs’s move to undermine the Africana Studies and Research Center. However, it is also clear that leading Black intellectuals were among the most vocal critics. We believe that the ease with which the Cornell administration dismissed national calls for an alternative course of action is rooted in an underlying racist paternalism which has no place in an academy of higher learning.
We are also appalled at the distortions and outright misinformation in Dean Lepage’s announcement, which reflects the “official line” put forth by Provost Fuchs. As a result, we would like to clarify several key points:
1. PhD PROGRAM—The Africana Center’s faculty members were already developing plans for a PhD program long before the Provost announced his plans to move the Africana Center. The Africana faculty had been discussing a PhD program for some time, and began drafting plans to establish the PhD program as early as 2005. The Provost and Dean have continued to spin the story as if they somehow granted the PhD program as a gift and a sign of good favor to the Africana Center. This is patronizing and downright dishonest. Moreover, we insist, as we have previously, that there is nothing about the nature of a PhD program which requires the Africana Center to be housed within the College of Arts and Sciences. If Cornell University is committed to creating a PhD in Africana Studies and would like to dedicate funds to that effort, then they should feel free to do so under the same administrative structure that has allowed Africana Studies to thrive for more than 41 years. Instead, in a disturbingly paternalistic fashion that evokes centuries of institutional racism, Cornell’s administration is only willing to infuse money into Africana Studies if the
Africana faculty is stripped of control over every aspect of the program including hiring, promotion and tenure, curriculum development, and faculty governance.
2. LEADERSHIP—In his recent announcement, Dean Lepage stated, “Over the past several months, the College Deans and Provost Kent Fuchs worked with Africana faculty to identify new leadership…Ultimately, we weren’t able to identify a faculty member who was both willing to serve and acceptable to a substantial majority of the Africana faculty…” This is a blatant lie. There are faculty members in the Africana Center who are willing and able to serve in the capacity of Director, and faculty members should be afforded the opportunity, as they have in the past, to hold elections and to determine their own fate. Yet, here again, the administration has held true to its recent pattern of excluding faculty participation, dialogue, and democratic rule in favor of authoritarian fiat. Perhaps most disturbingly, the administration’s choice to place the Africana Center under the control of two Associate Deans, neither of whom has any academic background in
Africana Studies, is tantamount to placing the Center into receivership. Such extreme action should only be taken when a department is bereft of leadership, and there is no other recourse. That is certainly not the case here, and this administrative abuse of power is absolutely unwarranted.
3. HIRING—Both Dean Lepage and Provost Fuchs have made promises to increase
the faculty of the Africana Center. However, they hinted at a process that favors joint appointments (though they have remained secretive about this initiative). Such an approach would undermine the Center’s longstanding ability to control its own hiring practices, tenure processes and allocation of faculty lines. Africana will, instead, be forced to hire and tenure only at the whim and discretion of other departments. This is a crucial point—one that has been largely overlooked, but is central to the fate of Africana Studies at Cornell and across the nation. For many of us, the actions of the Provost and Dean harken back to the 1997-1998 Humanities Report, which advocated for Africana Studies to be housed in Arts and Sciences on the grounds that the Africana Center posed an “especially difficult problem for University politics and policies.” In short, the report demanded that Africana be relocated under the jurisdiction of Arts and Sciences because the university administration wanted greater control over the Center politically, socially, and economically. Ironically, the Humanities Report—once it was exposed—went down to crushing defeat because, as the report itself acknowledged, “It would be shortsighted to envisage reforms or radical restructuring of departments and programs on the basis of misperceptions, poorly informed investigations, dubiously conceptualized arguments, or extremely limited visions of the University and its needs. It is all too easy to destroy strengths through ill-conceived innovations and institutional schemes.” (Emphasis added). Yet, here we are, more than a decade later, and the university has done precisely what it warned against. Administrators have destroyed one of the university’s true strengths, by implementing ill-conceived innovations and schemes. If the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell can be stripped of the right of faculty governance and denied the ability to be self-determining in regards to hiring, tenure, curriculum, and all other matters, every department across the nation is at risk.
4. FUNDING, ENDOWMENTS, & GIFTS OF CONVENIENCE—Over the past several months, both Dean LePage and Provost Fuchs have continued to make public announcements about increased funding, endowed chairs and other gifts to
be granted to the Africana Center. Yet none of these things have been documented on paper, or articulated with any specificity. Instead, they are nothing more than empty promises that have conveniently projected a false picture of administrative support to the public. Moreover, as additional evidence of its disregard for the Africana faculty, the administration has not discussed any of its plans directly with the faculty. Administrators have chosen, instead, to hand down decrees rather than to engage and to consult with their own faculty. Indeed, over the course of the past year, the Africana faculty has received most of the administration’s announcements concerning Africana’s future at the same time as the rest of the general public. This level of disrespect would not be tolerated in any other department, and should not be acceptable in Africana Studies either.
5. DISMANTLING OF BLACK ADVOCACY PROJECTS ON CAMPUS—The
restructuring of Africana is emblematic of a larger assault on Black advocacy projects at Cornell University. This move is an extension of the decline of Ujamaa Residential College, in which longtime residential housing Director Ken Glover was removed—with no explanation or justification—despite widespread support among faculty, parents and students. Additionally in June 2011, the administration restructured and diminished COSEP, the program designed to recruit and support the matriculation of Black and minority students. These decisions are part of a larger political project to dismantle many of the hard-won gains of Black students over the last 40 years and to punish those who maintain that legacy. The dismissal, disrespect, and alienation of certain faculty,
community members and programs are tantamount to political persecution, and
such behavior must be nipped in the bud before similar trends are allowed to flourish across the country.
Finally, as alumni, we want to reiterate our strong opposition to the administration’s conspiratorial decision to appoint Associate Deans Elizabeth Adkins and David Harris as the new “leadership” of the Africana Center. Not only is this move unprecedented in Cornell’s history; we also believe it to be regressive and colonial in nature. If “faculty enthusiasm is critical to effective long-term leadership,” as Dean Lepage contends, then why hold the Africana Center hostage under an externally appointed administrative regime? As the administration moves forward with its plans for the Africana Studies and Research Center, it must understand that the manner in which it has facilitated this move has not only compromised the integrity of Africana, but it has undermined the integrity of Cornell University in general. This deceptive, dishonest and unethical behavior is shameful for an institution of higher learning and directly contradicts the very principles that Cornell claims to espouse.
Leslie M. Alexander, Ph.D.
Jared Ball, Ph.D.
Monique Bedasse, Ph.D.
Scot Brown, Ph.D.
Alyssa Clutterbuck
Jonathan B. Fenderson, Ph.D.
Frances Henderson, Ph.D.
Keisha Hicks
Jody-Anne Jones
Candace Katungi
Jimmy Kirby, Jr.
LaTaSha Levy
Yusuf A. Muhammad, Jr.
K. Terrence Oliver
Saira Raza
Ann Wilde
Benjamin Woods
